Grief is an interesting character in our lives - it is always present, for us at least, and it changes sometimes on the daily to keep us on our toes. We feel like we have to be "on" all the time - game face on, emotional barriers up, "lucky" or "special" clothing like a cloak of protection -on! I want to be present, really, fully present, for Reed, for Chad, for my family, for my job, my business, for all of it.... but on these days these huge loss days - the milestone days- I cannot even be present for myself most of the time. I tread water and get through the day and remember why I stay here, and that I do not want my mother to feel the way that I feel. I try to remember all the love that Rye brought to our lives - all of us, and what he left behind for us to hold onto. I try. I also struggle to keep my head when I think of all the things we are missing.... Your friends are buying homes and having kids - grandkids, some of those kids are starting hockey and starting school this year because they are 5 now. It hurts to want to be so happy for them, but to have it split my heart in two that I do not have that because you are gone.
The first year you think is the hardest, because you really have done nothing harder in your life like what you have to survive in the first year after the loss of your child. The first year is like little razor blade cuts all over your heart, and sometimes your whole body, like death by 1000 cuts every day, groundhog day style. But you also have the "grief fog" that blankets the mind and keeps everything from being sharp and clear like you used to be. Grief lets you sort of float along the path shrouded in fog, scared and confused, and not knowing what to do or which way you are going, but the cuts are manageable, most days. Manageable. You also have people who lie to you and tell you that the first year is the hardest! I understand it..... they have to keep us going somehow, so they lie about how it will be..... even if they know better. It is done with love - always remember that.
The second year, Grief gets out the big knife! The fog lifts and the knife cuts drive deep into your heart, mind, body and soul with no fog buffer to blanket the loss feelings, and some of the memory clarity comes back so that the loss is felt with vengeance. Holidays and birthdays are hell. There are no celebrations that can blanket or mask the pain and the grief. There is no sound loud enough to drown out the screaming inside your head. You just ride the bloody waves of cuts that no one can see and try to keep from drowning in it. Trying to keep your head above water and not bleed on the people who didnt cut you. Once again simply surviving.
People will leave your life - they will just leave you. Friends and family, loved ones. There will be people that you just have to let go of - they will leave your life and you will not know why. Let them go with grace, fully knowing that for you it will feel like you have been abandoned. Grieve this, and let them go. There will also be those who are there for you no matter what. They will hold your hand, stand with you, and help you make hard choices and do hard things. They will help you to see the good things left here for you, and help you make new memories while remembering past ones. They will lift you up when you think you can't go any further.
I write the pain. Sometimes I write what I think other people can handle at the moment. Sometimes, like today, I write the pain so deep that it is like fingernails on a chalkboard. It seems as though loss parents write a lot. We fill pages and pages, and books of our loss and how we survived, filling it with the stories of our pain and our successes both large and small, for sometimes, the small ones feel big to us. Finding joy however fleeting, feels huge every time. Joy of any size or duration is a win!
There may be more people gone from my life after this. Some will sugarcoat it - or try to. I will not. If you arent able to handle the hard that is me now, and my truth telling, I will forgive you. I know how very hard this road is to travel, and how very hard it is to travel it while not understanding the depth of the pain and loss that we feel. I know that it is hard to wait for someone to be ready to travel further down the path towards healing. We feel like we are always out of sync with each other - never on the same path at the same time. Sometimes for us, healing feels like we are leaving behind our child who has really gone ahead of us. It still hurts the same.
Year three is a little less - the big knives are still out, but the deep diving cuts are further apart and sometimes in between the huge rolling waves of grief that still come crashing out of nowhere and leave you parked (hopefully) by the side of the road, or lying in a heap on the floor bawling until there is no more moisture in your body to cry out, there is a space of sunlight and blue sky where the memories dont try to kill you. But sometimes the dry heave cry begins - dry sobs punctuated by screams and silent screams because there is still pain trying to get out of you that has no where else to go except out - or deeper in - which is a dangerous place my friends. That is the place where the dark shadows of love, loss, memories and the flames of what is left of your soul live. Sometimes it is the holding place for all of the losses at one time and if you are not in a place where you can cry it out and you have to keep it in (think High school cafeteria or ice arena full of people), if festers and makes the light in your game face go out. The struggle to stay on the planet for the others becomes the highest priority above all others, and you can't explain this or you will scare the hell out of your loved ones still here.
Year four; we still have grief and pain, but we now have the 6 or 7 stages of grief that we can recognize - but sometimes only after we have had a meltdown or had a serious anger event that should not have been an anger event at all. "you sure do give that guy a lot of power over you!" someone said to me when I was having a bad anger day. I had to stop and think for a minute... the thing I was mad about was trivial and should not have set me off - but on an "anger" day the small stuff scorches the soul and sears the brain and sometimes the anger comes out in strange ways - trivial ways- always keeping you on your toes. They toss you around and float from day to day changing from anger to depression, to acceptance and finding meaning or sometimes all of them in one day! I have found though still that I have "days". Anger day, depression day (week really on this one), trying to find meaning week and so on through the stages all mixed up and in no particular order. The only one I dont seem to have come along very often is "bargaining". There is no "deal with the devil" or "bargain with God" that I could make that will bring Rye back, so I guess I have "accepted" that part.
If you have not learned about the "stages of grief" you should - even if you haven't had a loss like this- it is very interesting. These apply to every day life items as well as people loss events too. When the Middle School fell down during the earthquake in 2018, many of the people from that building (who transitioned to our building) had very eveident "grief stage" emotions. This was also true too when Covid cancelled school; especially graduation, sports, Prom, and on it goes. We had a building full of grieving people, all at various stages of their loss or story! I have read the book "On Grief and Greiving" by Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler a few times now - trying to tread water through this loss that causes so many other losses with it. There is a new book now that that is a follow up to that book called "Finding meaning, the sixth stage of grief" by David Kessler, and I am also working on one by my friend Cathy Abeyta "Living in the Frequency of Joy". She also is a loss mother and has marched this road that I am on. Reading is still hard for me but it helps to see that I am able to recognize (most of the time) the stages of grief, and that others in my boat are rising up and floating a little higher through things that might work for me too.
Click on the book for the link to her site.
I am trying to make space for more joy, and to rise, shine, and fake it less. The exercises in this book are giving me good reference points to focus on from someone who really knows this path. I was stuck on chapter four for about four months. It is hard work to try to heal something that cannot really be healed but I am grateful for the reminders and the ability to recognize where I am on the path and to feel like I am moving in a positive direction at least part of the time now. I try to uplift others and to remember that all of us have greif of some kind. I am trying to be gentle with myself and with others every day.
I am able to go through pictures and remember the good. This first vacation where Rye "Pat the MooCow!"
A friend said onetime that she had been in attendance when the mother of a friend of hers had come to see her dead child and how she would never forget that sound - that sound that the mother made is etched into my friends soul now. I know exactly the sound because I have made the sound. The sound of my soul being ripped out of my body while I am still alive. It is an unimaginable sound unless you have heard it before or made it. She will never forget how it sounds and I can never forget how it feels. Excruciating. I had a dream about Rye the other night, and in the dream he was about 10 and he was handing me rolls of toilet paper from behind me (of course it was TP?!?) and making a little game of it, tricking me and giggling when he handed it to a hand I wasnt expecting. I turned and tried to grab him and hug and hold him, and when my arms went through him, that sound came out of me again, that soul wrenching sound of loss. His smile disappeared, he looked horrified and then I woke, he was gone and I was dry heave crying in the middle of the dark night -once again missing my child.
Before I became a loss mother I did not know how to scream. I actually failed a self defense class for women because I could not make a scream sound. I could yell really REALLY loud but could not make that scream noise. I can scream now. Silent screams and screams that drown out thunder storms with lightning. Screams that can be heard over the fireworks on New Years and the sound that a mother makes when she has learned that her child is dead.
We are at year 5 today. Exactly. 5 years since you were taken from us. Stolen like the breath from our lungs when hit with a two by four across the back. Abruptly and without explanation, defying all of the things we had been told. Good comes to those who are good. If you are healthy and in shape and take care of yourself you will have a long life. Lies. Lies. Lies. The full weight of the knowledge that we are expected to be "over it" by now sits on our shoulders like the weight of ten worlds, but the truth of it is that we never will be. This "weight" is our forever and ever without end. Others forget; that moment when my heart was torn in half and I had to start loving a child in each realm, balancing the love on each side, but I cannot ever.
5 years and now the loss sits on my soul like it has always been there - as though I had been born with that thick black smut sitting right there.... but no, if it had been there all along I would not notice it now, surely not. It would not still hurt so badly, still, now. 5 years of missing a piece of my soul,and knowing that it is gone. I know that you loved us so much, every day of your short time here on this side.
I also know that you are here with us, still sharing your light with the world and making sure I see the signs. I have a jar of coins that you send - almost daily - pennies, dimes, quarters with just a few nickels. You must not have liked nickels! I have over 42 hours of "songs of the day" on my playlist so I have your messages every day. Sometimes they make me laugh and sometimes they make me cry, but they keep me going every day. Putting my feet on the floor and marching. Finding a way through the fog. We march into another year without you.
Blessed be on our journey, this side and that.
