“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” —William Shakespeare
Justine said it was ok for me to share this story. I made sure to ask her permission before I wrote this and we read it together after.
On Friday mornings, when I can, I try to help out in Justine’s classroom. This week, when I arrived, the receptionist in the office told me Mr. Carter had sent a message for me to get there as quickly as I could. As I walked toward the back of the school where the fourth grade classes are, down the long corridor, I saw two figures hunched over, sitting with their backs toward me. I realized one was the tall figure of Mr. Carter, crosslegged on the pavement, and as I got closer, my heart dropped to recognize the little one was my daughter, gently rocking herself. It didn’t look like they were doing math problems. I worried that Justine had hurt herself somehow, as she was crying tears, and that tough cookie rarely cries unless something is very painful….especially in front of others. Her teacher was bent over a list of class parent’s numbers, texting me.
“I’m here. What happened?” I asked, and they both looked up. Mr. Carter, in relief—Justine, just enough for me to see her sad face before bending inward again.
“I’m not really sure. She won’t tell me. The class is being amazing today, so I don’t mind sitting out here, but now you are here, I’ll let you two talk,” said her teacher.
So I took his place on the ground, drawing my little person into my lap. “Are you hurt?” She shook her head no. “Did someone say something mean?” No again. I held her for a long time and she continued to cry, which again surprised me as its rare for her to let go in tears. It took a long time and I’d run out of questions, before she gave me a clue. Finally she whispered: “You know what it is.” I was stumped, so I just said the last thing to come to mind: “Is it about Daddy?”
It’s been over three years since he died, and we’ve done a lot of processing. She always seems so resilient, but one thing that those I know who have experienced this before always told me was that emotions of grief can ambush a person out of the blue, even years and years after the event. She nodded her whole body in my arms: yes. And so I started the questions again: “What are you sad about?” She told me she wasn’t sad, but that she didn’t want to tell me how she felt. I told her I’d accept her answer no matter what. She was ashamed for some reason. Finally, we landed on the uncomfortable truth that she was feeling angry. She burst into tears again. This is something I could relate with. Anger is ok when you feel justified in it. But what if anger makes you feel like a bad person? We think we are allowed to feel some emotions but not others, justifying maybe that we should know better. I think this happens all the time after someone you love dies: its easier to just call it all sadness. It’s complicated enough for an adult, how much more for a child?
I asked if she was angry at daddy for dying. She shrugged, but quietly said: “Why did he have to buy that Vespa?”
“I don’t know, Honey. But if he knew he was going to die, I don’t think he would have. I assure you, he didn’t want to leave.“
“Well, Its not fair. It’s not fair that I don’t have a dad.”
“No…it’s not fair at all. You know what? I’m mad about that too, my Love.”
“All the other kids in my class have dads. And today the kids on both sides of me were talking about their dads.”
I hugged her tighter. I’d wondered how often she thought this way, with all the dads she regularly sees around the school, though it had been a long time since she’d said anything. “Lets go do something with this energy, ok? Lets get it on the outside of your body. Want to go throw some rocks? I think it’s really important that you told me all this, and we need to honor these thoughts before they hide away again. Can we do that?”
So I told Mr. Carter and the ladies in the office we’d be back soon, with everyone being very sweet and understanding, and we drove to the closest beach, just minutes away. The big grey clouds made a matching backdrop for our moods and the waves were crashing high. I was so glad it wasn’t sunny. We walked a ways down to get away from any other people and then chose our rocks carefully. Justine was attracted at first to the large ones she could barely lift with two hands before realizing the smaller ones were better for running and then releasing. We took turns screaming our angry words at the top of our lungs, which sounded surprisingly thin against the wind and roar of the waves, and soon we were laughing, out of breath and noticeably lighter in our chests.
I love the ocean so much, and I know we are fortunate to have nearby access to it. I pointed out to Justine that the roaring sea is like an emotional body that covers the earth. Sometimes it’s calm and sparkling, sometimes its stormy and loud…it’s all the things all the time.
“Imagine the great ocean accepting our rocks…I’m sure she can handle them. In the same way, we are allowed to go in and out of our feelings, no matter how uncomfortable they are. They pass and change, but its good to experience them and name them and to release them in healthy ways. Talking about them is one of the most healthy ways I can think of. Because look, if you hadn’t told me, we wouldn’t be here together, doing this. I’m glad I was able to be nearby, and I’m really glad you told me. It helped me express some anger and sadness that I had inside me too. And now we both feel better.”
We walked a little further on the sand and discovered a kelp nest holding treasures: some tiny shells and a dead sea urchin, which she was thrilled about as she’d never found one on the beach before. We noted how releasing the uncomfortable feelings made space to discover something new. She skipped around the sand in her free childlike way, the wind blowing her long hair, until she found stick to draw with. Then she stopped and began to write: “We Miss You Vernin (Vernon)” and drew a family of four underneath. She seemed light again, creative, accepting.
There may be nothing I love more than the littleness of her hand in mine as it grows through the years. I often appreciate that its a way to feel each other’s hearts through the skin, palm on palm. One day soon she may stop holding mine, maybe before they are closer in size. She’s changing a lot, and already doesn’t need me as much as she used to, but I was deeply grateful to be available for her on this day. I’ve heard it said, its not the ‘special days’ you prepare for but the normal days, when you are just minding your own business, that the difficult feelings of grief can show up and knock the wind out of you. I was thankful to Grief that day for choosing to come to her when I would happen to be near. The trickster can also be a gentleman. As we walked back to the car, hand in hand, I suggested she find something small to take with her to remember our getaway, something she could put in her pocket to touch if the afternoon in school felt too unreal. She chose a small flat rock, and insisted I text her teacher so he wouldn’t take it away as a distraction. Of course, I knew he would understand, but I did it anyway.
Again, Justine gave me permission to write and share this story. It’s her story, I’m just remembering it. We both agreed it might help some other child who might be surprised by the pain in their heart. It’s completely normal, but sometimes, in the moment, it feels anything but. Anger is not an easy emotion for many of us to recognize. She taught me a lot that day too: how to better love her, for one thing…and in that, how to better love myself.
“I live my life in ever-widening circles that reach out across the world.” —Rainier Maria Rilke
Did you know that the Anniversary #5 is traditionally celebrated with gifts made of wood? Dendrochronology is the science of dating events and variations in former periods by comparative study of growth rings in trees. Think of a cut tree-trunk with a pattern of annual rings orbiting it’s center, protecting the heartwood as it grows. If there is damage or trauma to the trunk of the tree, the rings will record it, and there will be a mirrored abnormal pattern on every new circle on out until the whole trunk has changed its shape and righted itself. It becomes the tree’s thumbprint, so to speak, the story of its life imprinted one ring at a time. And isn’t it interesting that the center of the tree is called heartwood? It’s what over time becomes the strong spine of the tree.
I’ve also been thinking about how my relationship to Vernon #3 has changed over time. He’s no longer with us, I know, but part of his soul got mixed with mine and as long as I’m around, he’ll be a part of that soup. Without a doubt, he is in the children—their faces, mannerisms, intelligence. Whereas in earlier years, I could only describe his memory as sort of feeling all around me at times, ready to jump out and overwhelm me with rip currents of grief/trauma, now I feel like I’ve sewn him into a pocket of my heart, something small and manageable. An invisible carbon reduction. A diamond in reverse. A portable piece of star. Something I can live and travel with. The love hasn’t gone away, its just changed it’s form to whatever it is supposed to be now. (And that’s ok, I’ve morphed quite a bit too.)
Now we are at the five year mark. Well, we will be in a couple of days. I was only married to Vernon #1 for 7.5 years. And Vernon #2 for another 2.5. How lucky for me, I got three of him, each so different and each utterly lovable. He has been my greatest teacher so far. Mostly, he taught me how to love unconditionally. I know, especially after his accident, that he became a teacher to many others too. He’s still managing to fulfill his purpose.
These beautiful woodblock prints were created by an artist named Bryan Nash. He died at 52 years old…that’s how old Vernon would have been now. I know he would have also loved this work, as one of Vernon’s passions was wood-working. He deeply loved trees in general. Check out more of Bryan’s work and mission HERE.
“I found that things were as or more beautiful and complex inside than what was visible from the outside…You’ll never know what you’re missing if you don’t find some way to get inside and look.” —Bryan Nash
It seems to me that a room or a building or a field or a town can be a container for memories you once left there, so returning to this place after a long time can be a powerful experience. Of course, the person you are on the day you return can temper the exchange. It’s a collaboration of ideas in that way, as if the familiar space is someone to fall into conversation with, reminding you of things you hadn’t thought about in years. For a moment, you can pick up where you left off, but of course, you’ve changed in the meantime, and now you are simply a listener. One day it might feel awful to return, as if the place is haunted. But another time, maybe you are ghost passing through, separate, detached. I guess it depends on how ready one is to listen…or to re-interpret the story.
This is something that’s been on my mind lately, which is probably why I was ready for my unplanned field trip this afternoon. I happened to have an appointment in the Mission Hospital complex. Remember Mission Hospital? That’s where Vernon was in his coma for three months (now so long ago.) Ah, the blissful days of not having to figure anything out…not really, they were scary, but back then, all I could do was hang out and wait and hope. I spent a lot of time walking around the hospital, noticing the things and people around me. I was a different version of myself then, but I’ve been meaning to go back and walk the grounds again…I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Guess I was waiting for an invitation.
Since I had enough time after my appointment, I decided to take the long walk back to my car, which meant circling around the back of the hospital by the ER. I only ever had to deal with this particular ER once, so I didn’t think I had much emotion attached to it, but as I walked by I saw a Davita Dialysis truck parked outside. Ugh. Davita Dialysis—probably my least two favorite words in the world anymore. I’ll admit that triggered a little mistiness, not for the memories of the hospital itself, but for the younger me that didn’t realize when he started dialysis in that hospital, it didn’t just mean extending his life as we were able, but that it would eventually be a huge sacrifice of energy and life-quality. I couldn’t have known (and if I had—I probably would have made the same choice.) But moving on quickly, I walked past the outdoor tables of the cafeteria, where I used to eat my oddly-timed lunches. I smiled at the sight of doctors and nurses gabbing and laughing under their table-umbrellas. What a sight. I was glad to see that they could still find moments to connect as normal humans within their stressful duties and difficult interactions. As I came around the corner of the building, I noticed the huge fountain out front. How compassionate that architect or planning committee must have been to welcome guests in with the comforting sight-sound of running water. I don’t know if I appreciated that before, but I certainly could now.
As I ventured into the lobby (I’d come this far, why not?) and noticed the people waiting in chairs or volunteering at the desk, I remembered thinking once-upon-a-time that every person there was going through something too. They are hopeful, thankful, relieved, worried, or in mourning. Hospitals manage to press all of this into a single nutshell. A hospital is meant to be a building of healing…even though trauma can sometimes make us think of them as the opposite. The barista at the coffee kiosk I used to visit was a girl I didn’t recognize. If it were still my old friend who made my daily cappuccinos, I would have queued up. Instead, I entered the gift shop, thinking: “Maybe there is a message here? I’ll look for one of Vernon’s fonts.” But the only ones I saw were on new-baby onesies. How funny is that? (Our friends who had a baby in the same hospital last month had mentioned how strange and disturbing it was to hear emergency that went through the building from the ICU, calling specialists to that ward, when they were in the middle of labor. And I remember the comfort of hearing the occasional angelic chimes that rang through the entire hospital every time a fresh new life exited the front doors. It’s clearly all happening there in one building: birth, death, and the physical complications that stretch between.)
I didn’t feel like I had the right to visit the ICU, nor did I really want to, but in passing the doors that would lead there, I recalled there was a meditative chapel just inside that I could access. I visited the space a couple of times in my early days and found it quite comforting as a place to escape on breaks from coma-vigil. No one was there today, thankfully, or I would have turned around. Immediately, I noticed the little basket of prayer-requests on a table by the door. I wondered if I had written something of my own once, surely I must have. I sat down to read what was there, hoping to honor someone else’s reality and pain. Perhaps it is because the chapel is next to the Trauma Unit (NICU) there were a couple of hand-written statements about someone who is in there right now…suffering from blood clots. They were concerned he would be brain damaged. I hurt for these people, knowing a little of what they might be going through upstairs. I didn’t know how to pray for them, but I did sit and cry for them a bit, holding space for their pain and hope and fear in my heart, mingled with the little I recalled of my own. Maybe that was the purest prayer I could offer.
Then I walked back out to my car, with my validated parking ticket, free to move into the rest of my day without deep concern for a family member in one of those rooms and grateful to not have to visit regularly. I was simply a passing tourist, an observant ghost who happened to come through on this day, separate now from everything going on there, but connected by indelible strings. If I’d have gone on a different day, I would have experienced it differently perhaps. But today was the day it was meant to be, the day I was invited back, the day I was ready to listen.
“Now the act of seeing begins your work of mourning.
And your memory is ready to show you everything.
Having waited all these years for you to return and know.
………
So that for the first time, you can walk away from that place,
Reunited with your banished heart, now healed and freed,
And feel the clear, free air bless your new face.”
“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
― Fred Rogers
Five months ago, in October, I began regular therapy sessions in the hope of working out some traumatic thinking. Although I wasn’t regularly feeling the sadness of classic grief, I found my brain couldn’t focus well, all my thoughts seemed to have equal importance, it was as if my thinking was fractured. It was causing problems because I felt stuck in moving forward. It was as if everything had changed in the world and I was struggling to trust myself in it. But actually, I knew it was me that had changed, and my understanding of the world had changed. It was hard to see any big picture clearly with such splintered lenses.I felt overwhelmed and dizzy in my spinning, kaleidoscopic view.
Of course it turned out that it wasn’t just trauma that had messed with my head. In some ways, all that trauma really did was shake up the roots in the garden for a prolonged period of time. When my therapist gently suggested some of my doom-y thinking might have been there for longer, my heart sunk.
“Ugh!” I remember putting my head in my hands. I could only see a too-familiar long, deep tunnel.
“What do you think of that?” she asked.
“I think this is going to end up being veeeerrrry expensive.” That’s all I could come up with.
“My job is to get myself out a job,” she replied. “Do you trust me in this process?”
What else could I do? I was already weeks in, more regularly feeling peaceful than I had in a long time. I could see it was worth it so far, and she was great, the best therapist I’d ever seen (she recommended poetry to me as homework, for goodness sake!) but it did seem like I could potentially be sitting on that couch for years to come—crying, free-associating, trusting forever. I’ve done a lot of counseling in the past, so I know this from experience. It’s about the journey more than the destination. And for complicated, sensitive types like myself, well…we are the ideal sustainable clients. A psychotherapist’s dream! 🙂
Anyway, in light of all this, with a little satisfied self-back-patting, I am proud to announce that last Wednesday, I told my therapist I was ready to stop our sessions for now. There has been a sense of change lately, a jolt of momentum, transformation perhaps, as if I’ve been in the shadows for a season—but it’s time to practice what I’ve learned, time to leave the brain-spa of my sessions. More a sense that it was time, really,than any real mental health I’ve been able to prove in the world. I don’t get a certificate or even a sticker. At least when you vote, you can go to the grocery store afterwards and proudly show off the sticker on your lapel (so totally worth it too!)
I suppose now I can rephrase why I went in the first place and also why I knew I was ready to stop: I felt I’d lost my intuition, which has served me so well in the past. And now I think I have it back, a little battered and taped together, but I’m ready to trust it again. And if I can’t trust it, I have lots of new tools to help me if I break down by the side of the road. Basically therapy is like auto-shop for the soul. You can keep a classic old car going for a long time if you know how to maintain it. Fixing the weakest points is inevitable, but as you go, sometimes engines simply fall out and tires explode on the freeway. I wish they’d told us this was all part of the human experience. But would we have listened if we hadn’t got there yet?
I was surprised and delighted at my confidence in saying I was ready to stop. Maybe that’s all she needed to hear to agree with me: that voice. (It’s not like I can’t go back—and I probably will for tune-ups.)So in our final session, here are some things we discussed, and these are some of the ideas I’ve marinated over the past five months.
I was enlightened to the idea of personal constructs, which I came to think of as temporary housing (sometimes distinct vows to myself and sometimes concocted ideas) built on a beach, perhaps on bamboo stilts to stay dry above the waves, from the battered and eroding shore…these are constructions to which I’d return for shelter but I found that most of them no longer worked the way they had, I was being flooded out as they had splintered and shrunk during the storm. Returning to them was futile, suffocating…they were limiting more than sheltering. It’s a humbling process to find that the ideas you’ve claimed as an anchor from discomfort are often just meant to be temporary. If those are temporary, what else is? These aren’t easy questions to ask or answers to listen for. (For example: “I’ll never love again.”Or “The other shoe will drop any second.” Or “It’s pointless to hope for lasting good things…I know better now.”)
My therapist was very much into the idea of untangling our narratives, which I hope to continue to put into practice. It takes a lot of imagination to look at the things we have looked at so long in a certain light that we just assume to be the TRUTH. But it takes even more valuable energy to hold on to our old constructs and the no-longer-helpful thinking that we’ve carried with us. Our minds are so brilliant, aren’t they? They get the better our peace all the time. We held a mirror up to the fact that I do tend to make my life harder than necessary because I lean toward thinking that is the right way, the best way.
As we summarized our time together into that last session, here is something she said that stuck with me: “You are going to get to where you are going no matter what. You don’t need to worry about controlling that. But what you can control is your emotional reactions along the way. You can stress over it or you can relax into it. It’s all about getting a little distance and reworking your words and ideas around things. There are other ways to look at these things. They don’t need to be gloom and doom. Just because its your experience once doesn’t mean it has to be that way again. Can we switch the word “end” to “and”…think of your endings as ‘and-ings.’” As a trauma survivor, that totally flips the script. And I love it.
(I told you she was great.)
Here is a poem she sent me as homework early on in our sessions. Poetry is a gift in my language, never to be taken lightly. She suggested I rest with it a bit.
Here are a couple of passages that I discoveredas I entered the new year. I think they match the season of internal work. The top and the last especially spoke to me, I still think on them often.
You can see some of that influence in this poem I wrote after a quick prompt in my monthly writing group. Love in all its forms is powerful…maybe most, when it comes from within.
“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.“— Rabindranath Tagore
February. What a month. So many significant dates. Vernon’s birthday, Valentine’s Day. Today marks 4 years since we found out he was ineligible for a kidney transplant (the most disappointing day of my life.) I was going to write about all of this to get it off my chest, but…something better happened instead.
In this season, there happen to be a lot of significant closures as well. They seem to be popping up all at the same time, some I’ve known about for awhile, and some are coming without warning. It’s definitely a season of change. I won’t write about that here tonight either, but its in the light of all this, that I am especially mindful of the wonderful symbol of love and life and hope and newness that a new life brings us. Little baby Theo couldn’t have come at a better time for our family. (And by family, I guess I mean tribe….but it feels like family.)
Our dear friends Sarah and Scott Hendrix had their first baby, Theo, on Valentine’s Day in the midst of the biggest February rain storm we’ve had in Southern California yet. For this couple, their most significant life moments have happened in the rain, which is usually rare. (They even got married on a surprise rainy day.) In the early days of their marriage, before I knew them, Sarah and Scott had taken Maki under their wing (here they are at his 13th birthday party) and of course Justine wanted to be a part of the action shortly after. We love them dearly as a family and as individuals and we are so blessed to walk beside each other on the journey. We’ve been looking forward to this birth for a long time now. And here he is! The first baby we have had around our little campfire since Vernon went away. Births and Deaths. Basically all of life is contained between these things. So we are so grateful for this bit of newness in our sphere. I speak for myself here, but I know that both Justine and Maki, at the ages they are, and the personalities they have, and where they are in their grief journeys, they are so happy too. We already love this little person, regardless of what he symbolizes. We are so looking forward to watching him grow.
We realized tonight, also, that the kids are 8 1/2 years apart. Maki is 17 now, and Justine in 8 1/2. So Maki was the same age that Justine is now when she was born. What a trip life is. Good thing we have the younger generation to gage things for us. Life sure has a way of coming to the surface, time and time again.
A special cover of Vernon's fav song 'Waterloo Sunset' by friend and singer/song-writer Ian McGlynn. All proceeds support Vernon's recovery! Donate what you can and download a beautiful song in return.
[bandcamp width=250 height=250 album=689425947 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 minimal=true]
