A New Chapter

 From my upcoming book on Facing Adversity.

The poet Dylan Thomas wrote, “After the first death, there is no other.”  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.

---

Vaulting to Easter

I've written a couple of posts and then erased them without publishing because I was sort of embarrassed by them.  You see I'm not really over my grieving yet and well-meaning and well-intentioned friends are getting impatient with me.  It's been nearly seven weeks and they are not only ready to move on, they have moved on. The fact that I'm still not over mother's death and the other things that have happened and am not fully ready to slay dragons and take on new challenges is frustrating to them.

It's a little frustrating to me, too, and it's a bit embarrassing to admit that some days it's really really hard to even get out of bed, much less face the world with a song in my heart.

Deep down, I know that it's okay to take the time I need to process the changes, but it also hard to admit that I am not one of those people who is able to get over and get on with it quickly and easily.

I think one of the reasons people want me to be all better by now is because our modern version of Christianity likes to leapfrog from the cross directly to Easter. In fact, sometimes I think modern Christianity doesn't even pause at the cross, but vaults to the rolled away stone at the tomb, maybe even to the Ascension into glory in one might bound. It's as if because we know how the story ends, we don't want to deal with all that messy stuff of Good Friday along the way.

However, the messy stuff of the Good Fridays of our lives doesn't just zap away because we know there is an Easter.  The cross remains, and it's a cross for good reason.  The living through it is hard, painful and sometimes seems as if it will never end. 

I try to assure my friends that I'm not just wallowing in self-piteous grief to be frustrating and annoying.  I'm doing all the things that you are "supposed" to do to move on.  It's just griefwalking has its own pace and route.  I'm happy that, for some people, their episodes of grief were compact and completed quickly.  Mine is just taking time.  Time to feel, let go and then feel again.  Time to remember, to cry, to buck up and then repeat the cycle.

It is getting easier and less painful, although the betrayal that I still can't quite talk about publicly (but I will as soon as I can legally) has added an extra layer to the process.  When one of the griefs subsides, the other roars in to take its place.

One of the things I have learned thus far is that compassion for one's own journey is an essential aspect of getting through.  I'm hoping that I am learning compassion for others as well so that maybe one day my griefwalking will help someone else who is feeling embarrassed because they aren't "all better" overnight.

For now, I'm working on having compassion for me.

I spent the afternoon getting the taxes together for my mother and me.  Finally, after wrestling with numbers and information, I went in to pick up all the forms I'd printed only to discover one of the cats had peed all over the stack.  (I think I know which one, but they were both had the "Who? Me?" look when I got there.)

Now after all that has happened this past six weeks, from death to taxes, the cats must have decided that my life was, to use a phrase, piss poor these days.  Wasn't it nice of them to make the comment for me?

The Winter of My Discontent

"Now is the winter of our discontent /

Made glorious summer by this sun of York."

When I was little, I had this perpetual calendar, a sort of circular thing with the months on it. December, January and February were winter. In my mind, the year is still divided that way and tonight, as I get ready for bed, I realized that tomorrow begins a whole new season!!  March/April/May are spring according to my internal calendar from childhood. (Never mind that November through June are essentially grey winter here in Oregon.  I'm not going to think about that!)

Since tomorrow is March 1, I am hoping and praying that there will be a lightening of the burdens that have plagued all of the winter of my discontent.  It's been a very very long winter and I'm quite ready for the summer, not by the sun of York, but by the Son of Man, to come.

I'm Sorry

I owe everyone who has lost a loved one an apology.

I never realized just how exhausting and painful griefwalking is.  I bought into the cultural norms that say that a month after a death should be plenty to move on with life.

It isn't. 

It's just the beginning.

Oh sure, the acute stage is over and I can go a day without crying (usually), but the sense of loneliness, of abandonment, the weight in the pit of the stomach, the fear that wells up in the middle of the night...these things are still very much present. 

I didn't know.  And because I didn't know, I wasn't as fully present, as sympathetic, as empathetic to those who were grieving as I could have been.

I'm sorry.  Please forgive me.  I now know better.

Betrayal: the Monkshood of Life

Mother died a month ago today but this isn't about missing her. It's about another kind of loss.

I received word today that I had been betrayed by someone I considered a good friend and trusted companion.  This betrayal that has shaken me to the very core and has catapulted me into a whole new cycle of grief.

What makes betrayal so painful is that it requires a high level of caring, intimacy and vulnerability. When the dagger is inserted, the pain comes not just from the wound but from seeing who wields the weapon.  I suspect that's why Caesar's last words were, "Et tu, Brute?"  The pain of betrayal was more agonizing than the mortal blows.

 
As I think about the betrayal in my life--and it is a betrayal that involves more than just me and my feelings; it will end up in both civil and criminal courts on a federal level--I am struck by the passage in Scripture that says evil can appear as a angel of light.

It reminds me monkshood, a lovely flower that is so deadly that it contaminates the very soil it grows in, rendering the earth itself poisonous. It's so toxic that you dare not weed around it without wearing gloves and even then, when taking off the gloves, you can be in mortal danger. Yet, the flowers are almost incomparable in their beauty.

Betrayal is the monkshood of life.

Couldn't have said it better

Grief is an automatic process in which a period of denial helps buy time to process the loss. Although we tend to believe grief passes through consecutive stages, it doesn't. Emotions come and go in no particular right order. We respond with numbness, shock, denial, intense sorrow, pain, anger, confusion, loneliness, emptiness, depression, guilt, fear, abandonment, isolation, physical symptoms, irritability, fantasy, restlessness, disorganization and even moments of hopelessness.

Grief taxes the immune system, making the body more susceptible to illness. Physical symptoms can include headaches, fatigue, appetite loss, dizziness, heart palpitations, numbness and insomnia. The overall feeling is one of exhaustion caused by the intensity of emotions.--Dr. Linda Mintle

Emily Dickinson Kick

I'm on a bit of a Emily Dickinson kick these days.  She is one of the few poets whose words I know by heart.  Today it's:

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

I can wade grief

I can wade Grief --
Whole Pools of it --
I'm used to that --
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet --
And I tip -- drunken --
Let no Pebble -- smile --
'Twas the New Liquor --
That was all!

Power is only Pain --
Stranded, thro' Discipline,
Till Weights -- will hang --
Give Balm -- to Giants --
And they'll wilt, like Men --
Give Himmaleh --
They'll Carry -- Him!--Emily Dickinson

Saints and Grief

 When I was writing my book on Saints and Suffering last year, I didn't include a chapter on Grief. There were several reasons for that, but probably the main one was that I didn't realize just how much suffering there is involved in the grief process.  Now that I've been griefwalking throught my loss, I think I'd like to investigate how the saints dealt with and handled their grief. 

The one place I do talk about grief is in the chapter on St. Jane de Chantal.  In it, I wrote:

St. Jane de Chantal had more than her share (of suffering)

It began when her beloved husband, the Baron de Chantal, died from an accidental gunshot wound, leaving her a widow with three small children. Jane was inconsolable and despondent, falling into a deep, grief-fueled depression for at least four months. For various reasons, including protecting her children’s estate, Jane was forced to live with her father-in-law, a difficult and tyrannical man who made her life miserable. For seven long years, she lived in virtual servitude until finally, as her biographers say, her patience and virtue triumphed.

Yesterday I talked about how our culture expects us to be over and done with grief in a matter of days (preferably hours if not minutes), but that grief doesn't work that way.  I find it surprisingly comforting to realize that a saint was "inconsolable and despondent," even deeply depressed, after a death.

Because we are so loathe to let grief has its time, the depression that falls like a soggy wet tarp on life isn't something we are comfortable discussing.  "Get something to help!" is the well-meaning advice of friends.  What they really are saying is "Your depression is making me uncomfortable, so take something so that you act happier and that way I won't have to feel so uneasy when you burst into tears over a cup of tea."

Taking a drug to mask the feelings only means that the feelings are submerged, and submersion isn't the same as healing. Healing is a process...a process that takes time. If it took St. Jane four months to begin to come out of her grief depression and she was a saint, then it's okay for me (and for you) to take the time we need to experience our walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Moving On...or Grief is SO 12 Seconds Ago

Our society is very instant-oriented.  Movie stars separate and the tabloids have them "moving on" to their next relationship before the indentation from the wedding ring has time to disappear. The commerical for ATT&T captures it perfectly. "That is so 12 seconds ago!"

Grief, however, still responds to older, deeper rhythms. Rhythms that can't be forced into our Insta-Over-It mentality.  The stages of grief have to be processed in their own time, and that processing simply takes time.

For me, with my Mother, several of the stages were accomplished on the long journey.  I didn't deny her passing or bargain with God about it.  I was ready for the stage of sorrow and gradual acceptance before I got the actual phone call.

As I sit here on a Sunday afternoon, feeling sort of out touch and out of reality, I know that the grief I'm feeling comes from two sources.  First, the great sweeping waves that come when I think about Mother.  I surf them, feeling them rise and fall beneath my heart, taking my breath away as they crescendo.  

Then, there are other waves; short, harsh, choppy waves like the sea in a storm, pounding and battering against the shore of my being. These waves of grief come from the whole situation swirling around the friend who was arrested for a white collar crime.  (Since it isn't my story and since we are still innocent until proven guilty in this country, I choose not to disclose anything more about it here.) These waves of grief are on an entirely different schedule than those surround Mother.  They answer to the names of denial, bargaining, anger and fear.

When I am between waves, I think, "How odd to be caught in two different grief cycles at the same time."  Then a wave comes, be it sweeping or short, and I feel the ancient rhythms of pain take over.  There is no way out but through.

God grant that I have the strength to make it through two cycles simultaneously.

Let It Be

It's a bit surprising to me that I have been getting up, going to a new part-time job, working on my regular writing and editing, feeding the cats, feeding me and even, once in awhile, sweeping the floor, all on a sort of autopilot. It's only in the middle of the night, when there is nothing conscious to block the subconscious that the feelings of fear and pain surge.  I wake up every couple of hours, heart racing, mind whirling, fear-filled and sorrow-drenched.

Grief is a night stalker.

As I remind myself to breath, I am acutely aware that Mother died three weeks ago today. I received a check in the mail for the deposit we put down several years ago on her room in the assisted living/nursing home where she lived and died. It was a breathing-sucking moment to see her name on the check.  I laid it on the seat of the car as I drove into the driveway from the mailbox and it's still there.  I probably should go out and get it, but I think it can wait until morning.

I've never exactly believed that hard things come in threes, but they do seem to cluster in our lives.  Perhaps the good things cluster too, but we just don't pay as much attention to the good as the hard, sad, difficult things.  However, these past three weeks seem to have been a knotted cluster of pain.  There is, of course, Mother's death and all the commensurate pain that surrounds the loss of the woman who was the most significant and influential person in my life.  Added to it is my sorrow, confusion and pain over a good friend who was arrested in connection with a white collar crime. Not to mention the feelings that came with being interviewed by the police. No matter that I know nothing, it's still a bit disconcerting to have a police detective arrive on your doorstep. And then there is the heartache for a friend whose mother had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.  Having just walked through several months of hospice, I felt my heart being pulled the pit of my stomach at that news.

This afternoon, despite the fact I had more to do than time to do it in, two friends asked me to join them for a cup of coffee at the Washburne Cafe.  After driving by it three times (It's that autopilot thing again.), I finally found a parking place and feeling like my inner and outer being was in shambles, I met them.  I could barely tell you where I was, but they steered me to a table, gave me something to drink and began to comfort me.  We talked and laughed and prayed.  They lifted me up and reminded me that all things have a season and nothing lasts forever---good or bad.

"It's been a long season," I thought, remembering back a year ago when Mother broke her legs and the long long road that finally led home. I didn't want them to know, but surges of panic were rising again as I thought about how to manage her last affairs, pay her taxes, and try to find a way to now take care of me and my own needs.

Just then I noticed that there was a song in background.  I hadn't heard any music playing the whole time we were talking, but suddenly I heard the words, "Let it be."  The Beatles song was coming from somewhere.  I stopped and listened:

And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me
Shine until tomorrow, let it be
I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be
There will be no sorrow, let it be
Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Let it be.
Let it be.

I truly believe that God was sending me a message at that moment.

Let it be. Let it all be just as it is.

There will be no sorrow. Let it be.

Praying for Summer

If some King of the earth have so large an extent of Dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his Dominions, 

so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his Dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgement together: He brought light out of darknesse, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the wayes of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclypsed, damped and benummed, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadowes, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons—John Donne

Small Surprises

I've been an orphan for two weeks now.  I realize that's an odd way to express it, especially at my age, that is the reality. Two weeks ago, at 4:14 am, the world as I knew it altered forever.

These past two weeks have been filled with a lot of sadness, but also some small surprises. Maybe, because there is so much heaviness in my life right now, I am savoring the small bits all that much more.

Like last night.  I was having a massive craving for chocolate, but there wasn't anything in the house and I up to going out.  On a whim I opened the cookie jar, which never contains cookies and LO!!!  There were four, count them, four OREOS!!  I don't know exactly how long they'd been there, but they tasted just fine as I snorfed them down.

Just a small surprise in the midst of dark days.


(And while I'm talking about dark days, I have a friend who is experiencing some huge issues with his business and another whose mother has just been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer.  So to those who find and read this blog, a few prayers, good thoughts and positive energy sent their way would be most welcome.)

Floating Rib

Did you know that your 11th and 12th ribs can "float" up under your 10th causing a great deal of pain that can mimic a heart attack or gall bladder?

Well, neither did I.  But now I do.  I was fairly sure I wasn't having a heart attack when I went to the doctor, but I was thinking of dire things like liver cancer, gall bladder etc.  But apparently it's "just" a rib floating out of place.

I have a great many things floating through my mind right now and apparently my rib wanted to get in on the action. 

And so I leave you with this passage from my upcoming book on suffering, Facing Adversity with Grace:

When you are able to see your suffering in the light of life’s greater purpose, your suffering becomes redemptive rather than destructive. As long as you believe your suffering is without merit, it will do nothing for your spiritual growth. It is only when you realize that physical suffering can become a means to holiness that it can be transformed from mere pain into peaceful acceptance....

, in the words of the great poet Kahil Gibran, “Your pain… is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self. Therefore trust the physician and drink his remedy in silence and tranquility. For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen.”

A Full Moon

I have a small meditation chapel in my house.  It doesn't have any light other than a skylight and candles (I'll take a picture in the day and post it later) so the night is clear and close.  Last night I stood outside the door, which has a temple bell hanging before it, thinking about all the changes that have suddenly been thrust upon me.

My mother's death certainly tops the list.  But just a few days before she died, I took a temporary job at a debt collection company to help both with some of the finances and to get my focus off caregiving for a little while.  Little did I know that the job would be taking my mind off grief for a few hours each day since I started on Monday, the one week anniversary of the funeral.

I'm not quite sure why I found and took this job...or perhaps was lead and given it.  It certainly isn't anything I've ever done or aspired to do.  However, I firmly believe, even when I am in the midst of doubting everything including my sanity and the presence of God, that all things happen in our lives for a reason.  That everything comes with a lesson attached.  Sometimes the lesson is learned in joy, sometimes in sorrow.  Sometimes in difficulty, sometimes in ease.

Lately my lessons seem to be learned more in sorrow and difficulty than in ease.  Perhaps that's because I don't pay sufficient attention to the lessons of joy and ease.  Or perhaps it is because I am sending out signals that indicate I want to learn the hard way.  After all, it says in Job that "What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true."  It does seem that what we focus on comes to pass and certainly this past year my focus has been on hard things.

As I enter the meditation chapel on my way to bed, I look up through the skylight and see the full moon overhead, a silver bowl in a star-spangled sky.  I can see why the ancients thought the moon was a goddess, draping her soft shimmering light over the land, transforming the harshness into gentle shadow and flowing shape.

Perhaps, starting now, I can begin to learn some lessons from a place of joy, instead of pain. 

It's the prayer I send to heaven on a moonbeam during this full moon.

One More Day

Today is the one week anniversary of my mother's funeral.  I had great plans to do many things yesterday. But the best laid plans went aglee as Robert Burns wrote and instead I just took the the time to breathe my way into the night. 

I am shocked at how grief creeps in on strange little paws.  Like yesterday.  It was the first Sunday in 12 years that I haven't visited Mother (unless I was out of town or ill) and the void is palpable.  Even going to a friend's and watching the Superbowl didn't fully shift the feelings, although it did help.

I know that the only way out is through.

But a hot bath didn't hurt.

Measuring a Year

Because I am an only child, my mother's death is a solitary event for me. There are no siblings to share memories with and while my son remembers his grandmother, she was one generation removed and therefore his grief is, understandably, different. I still have two aunts who live in another town, but they, too, are experiencing the death on a different level--that of their sister.

A week ago, I was preparing for a funeral, making a plenitude of decisions and careening into tears at the flicker of a memory.  Today I haven't cried...yet...although the pervasive sense of unreality, of griefwalking continues. 

A year ago my mother fell and broke both legs. At the time she was expected to die, but she didn't and her last year gave me a chance to create some closure, work out some issues and prepare myself, as best as we can, for the final departure.

So what is echoing in my heart right now is this song from Rent (which isn't my favorite musical by a long shot!)--How do you measure a year?

Griefwalking

My mother died a week ago today and I've been living in what I can only describe as GriefTime. The hours have taken on a peculiar fluidity which sometimes feels like it has been forever ago and at other moments seems like it just happened.  Long past memory blends and blurs with current time and recent events to form a sort of hazy melange in my mental subduction zone. I griefwalk through the motions of the day, sometimes feeling very focused and then, at other times, realizing I've put the coffee cup in the refrigerator and the cream in the dishwasher.

It's a time like no other that I've experienced, even though I have experienced death before.  I think it is because my life and my mother's were deeply enmeshed, by her deliberate choice and intent from the moment of my birth. For her, the boundaries between mother and daughter were a permeable membrane and having grown up with that as my default normal, I never truly understood the extent to which the threads of her life were woven through every aspect of my life, forming an integral part of the design of my existence. For most of her life, until dementia began to confuse her, I knew what she wanted, without her having to articulate it and would simply provide it for her.  When, late in her life, I sometimes failed to anticipate and provide, she would say in frustration, "You always used to know what I wanted!!!" And I did.

For my entire life, I was Eileene's daughter, first and foremost.  Even when I was a wife and a mother myself, I was always Eileene's daughter first.  Now her death is forcing me to reidentify myself.  While I will never cease to be her daughter, it is no longer the first and most prominent of identifiers. I do not really know who I am anymore. Her death striped me of the one identity that I have carried since the day I was born.  I am having to ask the question, "Who am I?"

I believe that I will find the answer, but for now all I can see and feel is the hole where the identity once was.

Oddly, the hardest thing so far has been going online and realizing that I can use the money in her account that I always so carefully preserved for her bills for myself if I choose. I was always excruciatingly careful to keep her funds separate from mine, even  when I was in need and to think now that that what is there, even if it isn't a lot, is mine to use is disturbing in ways I never anticipated or even considered. It somehow feels like I'm doing something wrong, even when the use is for her last bills and expenses. The sense of duty, of doing the right thing by my mother, is deep within the marrow of my soul.  I suspect it will take some time before I understand on a soul-level that I did the right thing until the very end and now there is a new right thing to be done.


The other thing that I am noticing is that the emotional elements of grief are being superseded by genuine physical pain. This part of grief hurts, not just intellectually or emotionally, but deep within my chest cavity, within my bones and tendons and muscles. 

Mourning is hard work, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.


So I griefwalk, reminding myself that "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens..." This is my time to weep and mourn, but I have to believe that there will come again a time to laugh and dance.