Stuff and what not

Wow, this screen is bright… A big blank page. I’ve never noticed that before, how ominous an empty page can seem.

Where am I? How am I? I don’t know. I know that freaking Christmas sucks. Two months of pure torture, smiling happy faces, songs about family being together and the echo of what life used to be. I’ve long been an overly obnoxious Christmas lover. I loved the lights and the songs and the coco and most of all I loved that it meant time. Time with those that are mine. It doesn’t mean that anymore. Christmas sucks. Even more than life sucks on average, which is a lot.

Will and I ran away, literally. We spent a week split between road tripping and snuggling in a little cottage overlooking tide coming in and out. I slept, a lot, like a whole lot. Will enjoyed not having to be anywhere and played a lot of video games (his little escape). We spent hours in silence, comfortable silence. One of the things I love about us is that we’re pretty good about just letting things be what they are. If we don’t feel like talking we just don’t and we didn’t, a lot. We also spent some time laughing until we cried and then I just plain cried, hard.

I missed Damon. I ALWAYS miss Damon. I also missed Isaiah so much it hurt. I hated being away from him. I ached for him and it felt good. That’s not really something I can explain, that it felt good to ache for my living child but it did. It felt good to ache for someone I would get to run to and hold again. Someone I love with every stinkin’ ounce of everything I am. It felt good to scoop his full 66lbs into my arms and feel like a piece of me got put back together. It felt good. It feels good to feel love, even though it hurts.

I missed here which was without a doubt the most unexpected occurrence in my life since the hell of March. I missed Oklahoma’s open plains and cold winter weather. I missed this stupid town that I so often HATE. I’m glad we left, so so glad, but I also missed the traditions. I don’t think I could have handled them this year but I missed all the little things my family does that they don’t even realize they do and the tether from my heart to the southwest was strung so tight it stung. It felt like Damon was here and I wasn’t. I know this is one of the millions of instincts left, part of my hearts absolute refusal to believe that he’s gone but it was a feeling I couldn’t shake. Maybe it’s because almost all of the people who love him were here.    

I guess the long and short is we survived. I’ve thought so much about all of the parents who have lost children, some the nation is aware of, most only a small section of the world is rocked and an even smaller portion destroyed all together. I thought a lot about what I would give to be back in the ‘happy bubble,’ to be plugged back into the matrix. I often loathe the happy oblivious people but the truth is it’s jealously. I can never again have what they have, never ever.

I have no profound thoughts; this is just where I am. This is just what I think. I’m slowly opening, slowly regaining function in some of my paralyzed limbs. It burns, aches, hurts in ways I can’t explain.

I took Isaiah with me to the grocery store this morning. He wanted waffles. I’m his mommy and I made him waffles. I made him waffles and I made my husband coffee and eggs. Doesn’t sound like much but in my world it was like a former quadriplegic walking. Isaiah said “Mommy, I wish we could always be together, like all the time, never apart.” Holy geez I love that kid. I have to remember that the burn is worth it. 

I’m trying; we’re all trying, right? Tell you what I won’t judge you and you don’t judge me and maybe walking across the room will happen more often for all of us.

Until next time. 

Hello world

Hello world…

Today I went to the grocery store. I went to the grocery store by myself. I went to the grocery store by myself, got everything on my list and did not have a panic attack. On the way home with a trunk full of groceries I cried. Not the hysterical sobbing, aching cry but I sort of relieved cry. I felt the bindings loosen a little today, maybe a small piece of the ten thousand ton weight fell from my heart, a shard of shrapnel was removed.

I’m writing this because it’s happening now and someone needs to know or someone will. When I read books about grief the words are rounded and smoothed by healing, years of healing. I’m in it now, right now. Nothing is smoothed, nothing is rounded, everything is jagged.

I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. My trauma was the death of my amazing son. A dear friend, someone I respect a treasure said to me recently “People need to know about this!” I had no idea PTSD could be induced by the death of a child and for a long time I had no idea my symptoms were not “just grief.”

My (very simplified) understanding of PTSD goes something like this. My mind absolutely could not process Damon’s death so it completely shut down when it started to wake up again it partitioned the trauma into its own space in my head. Because my brain has partitioned itself nothing works correctly and everything is misfiring…

So, here is what PTSD is like for me.

I can’t remember Damon’s death without being there, without reliving it. It’s like being shoved into a pensieve and not being about to get out, not even knowing you could get out, not knowing what you are in is a memory. It’s happening again, except this time I know how it ends. This, I am told, is a key characteristic of PTSD.

I cannot function in the “normal” world. Unexpected changes in my day produce panic attacks. Crowds produce panic attacks and early on not knowing where Will was (if he went around a corner or went out of my sight) would produce panic attacks. Loud noises, multiple people talking to me at once, virtually anything that causes stress or confusion brings on a panic attack. What is a panic attack? For me it feels like the world is going dark, everything closes off, my heart rate sky rockets, my breathing becomes rapid, I sweat buckets, I can’t see well and I definitely can’t think.

Nightmares & flash backs– relatively self explanatory and I’m not up for going into it.

My precious friend wanted to know how she can help someone she loves who she thinks may be experiencing PTSD. My first response was “you can’t.” That’s partially true, there’s very little anyone can do outside of a competent therapist but then I amended. How can you help? Get over the idea that this is something a person with this disorder can want their way out of. I cannot control my panic attacks. I cannot control my flashbacks. I cannot stop the nightmares. I cannot force myself to do anything and the harder I try the worse it gets. Everyone is different but the thing I need most from the person I love the dearest is understanding. Understanding, space and time to do the grief work as I’m ready. I need my beloved to understand that I don’t want to be like this. My brain is screwed up. It will take a lot of time and a lot of work to heal the shattered parts. 

  

I don’t know when I’ll write again. I’m feeling very withdrawn. I very much want to be alone, to be isolated. Maybe because I’m slowly slowly exposing my wounds but my friend’s words struck a chord with me and I wanted you to know. I wanted you to know a little of what it’s like. I want you to know how to help if you’re the helper and I want you to get help if you’re the shattered. Until next time…

I miss you! I miss you! I miss you!

I smiled today and I cried, both rarities in my life these days. The smile far rarer than the tears. I am told this is a symptom of PTSD, dissociation. My mind can’t cope so it just shuts parts of itself down. It shuts parts of me down. Most of the time all I feel is the harpoon jammed through my still beating heart. I try desperately not to turn, not to move, cough or breathe too deeply… not to shift the position of the impaled barb and send agony shooting through me. Today I stood in Damon’s doorway and said “I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.” The barb shifted and the tears came. I can’t cope…  How on earth could anyone cope?

Baby boy, I miss you! I miss you! I miss you!

In what reality is this my world?

Whateth the crapeth?

I’ve been eyeballs deep in the Old Testament. It’s seriously unsteady ground. Nothing about it fits into neat little packages and the “anemic” descriptions of “characters” that I grew up with are embarrassing and downright untruthful.

David, for example, is a selfish womanizing murderer and not just in that “unfortunate episode” with Bathsheeba. An honest reading reveals there were no heroes of the Hebrew bible… none. Every single person was warped, twisted and downright human. Interesting.

The psalms are 40% laments, Jeremiah rants nearly incoherently at God for an entire chapter (and often in snippets elsewhere}, Ezekiel isn’t so thrilled with YHWH himself, the book of Job seems to slyly take shots at typical ‘easy’ answers and tidy theological explanations and then there’s the book of Lamentations. Each ancient voice saying “whateth the crapeth?” (that was a joke…)

It seems to me the ancients regularly questioned, ranted, screamed and left the edges of their stories raw with inexplaination. As much as the Hebrew bible makes me want to scream in frustration, as much as YHWH sometimes seems schizophrenic I prefer this true to life version of faith. I’ve started to understand that what lies across my lap when I read the bible is the record of a community literally wrestling with God and most often totally not getting it. There is nothing static here, there is honesty among manipulation, there is fear, pain, drop kicking of faith and seeking it out.. Life is messy… there is no cleaning it up.  

“He is not a tame lion," said Tirian. "How should we know what he would do?...” – The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis

Mine

I discovered something. I discovered that I know what I’m doing. Not always and not even in a definable way but I know what I’m doing. I want to scream it. Let me do this… let me do this my way. Only I know my wounds. Only I know my pain. Only I can guide the healing process.

I put my foot down. I said “no, I’m not doing this,” to my therapist no less. The next day the skies opened, I could breathe. I was disoriented… lost, spinning with the oxygen that entered my lungs. I didn’t think much, except about Damon. I didn’t try to figure out where the sudden space had come from. I let myself brush against some of his memories. They didn’t sear through my soul. They hurt… immeasurably more than I can describe but I could endure it, for short spurts.

Today is different. I hurt more but air still comes when I drag it into my lungs. I see the world today. I look around blinking, seeing beauty. It’s shocking. I revel in the crispness, the normal everyday sounds that fill the air. It feels good to see. My mind started to pull itself out of the shock of colors, sounds and smells and it occurred to me that this space, this light came with me stopping the world spinning and saying “no” and meaning it, with me trusting myself enough to determine that something wasn’t working and set my sights on reshaping it so that it would. I took back some semblance of control and realized that I know what I’m doing.

I think this is universal. I think each of us know what we’re doing. I’ve long loathed the word “should.” It raises my ire like few utterances can. No one should. I HATE should. I think deep down you know what your soul needs. You know what will heal, help or propel you but we drown ourselves in ‘shoulds’ and it seems we are so very unwilling to give each other space to stumble through the dark. We often insist on shining an uninvited searchlight into the eyes of one who will only be blinded by the intrusion.

I’ve said this before but now I see it. I see it so clearly. Only I can determine when or if I’m ready. To be pushed, or to push myself into doing something, experiencing something or confronting something when my heart isn’t ready is damaging and perhaps deadly. Damon is mine. My grief is mine. My PTSD is mine. My memories are mine. I’ll go there when I’m ready, on my own terms.

It feels good to trust myself again, if only a little bit. I’m just going to keep breathing for as long as the air comes and we’ll go from there.

PTSD

Do I publish this? Isn’t the crazy that happens in your therapists office supposed to stay private? I don’t know but I’ve come this far. I don’t want anyone to ever feel as alone or insane as I do so here’s the latest chapter in my journey in grief.

I have PTSD. I sat here and stared at that sentence, like maybe seeing it in writing would make it make sense. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder… I have a disorder. In part this new knowledge is a bit of a relief, an explanation for why I couldn’t seem to track with anyone or anything else, for my virtual dysfunction, hysteria, memory gaps, panic attacks, jumping at every sound, massive emotional swings from numb, inaccessible and distant to crippled by pounding tsunamis of pain and memory, for the uncontrollable flashbacks and the persistent nightmares. “I thought this was just grief” I told my therapist “No, this is grief buried under PTSD.”  She said “the first thing you need to know is you are not going crazy.” She said these words trying to hold my gaze, trying to make me believe them. “Do you feel like you’re going crazy?” “YES!!!”

I grappled with this new knowledge, trying to make it settle in my befuddled head. It still hasn’t. What does this mean? I have post traumatic stress disorder… does that mean I don’t have to live like this for the rest of my life? It can… but treatment for PTSD is exposure therapy. My stomach turns just seeing the words. It means I have to walk back through those two and a half days, step by brutal step. I have to look at them. I have to expose myself to them. Oh God.

We tried this week, after less than ten minutes I was curled in the fetal position on her couch sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe, head pressed so hard against my knees my forehead hurt. My man was there with me. I can’t even imagine what it was like for him, walking through a nightmare that actually happened and seeing me reduced to a virtual animal.   

I’ve read a lot written by bereaved parents. I often feel that they are the only people with whom I can connect but even here I felt a disconnect. They talk about it. They talk about their child’s death. They talk about the day, the hours, the hospital room, the clothes their little one was wearing. I had wondered why I stood outside this experience, why I could not do this. Now I know.

Do I have the strength to do this? I honestly don’t think I do. We’ve been told I’ll likely get worse before I get better. That almost makes me laugh, worse? I suppose I could reenter the near catatonic state of the months immediately following Damon’s death but I’m not even sure that would be worse. 

Still, I’m terrified… 

Truth?

Some time ago I read a blog post written by a woman who was present at a tragic event where several people were brutally murdered. Her post spread rapidly among Christian communities and was posted on the websites of Christian radio stations. From my perspective the gist of her post was “why would this make me question God’s goodness?” She vehemently defended her faith and asserted that evil was responsible for what happened, not God. Again, very recently I read a post by a bereaved mom. Her position was much the same. She said she is not angry with God for the death of her child, why would she be?

First, I need to make it clear that I thoroughly respect the feelings, thoughts and opinions of these women (and anyone else for that matter). Quite frankly I think a place of peace with one’s circumstances is a beautiful place to be. I’m envious but given that this is the stance held up by the Christian community and lauded as great faith I feel the need to speak for those of us who just aren’t there.

I’m not going to get into a dissertation about how evil can operate in a world where God is omnipotent and omnipresent but I will say that to point to evil as the cause for death and destruction is an incomplete assessment. Is God in control or is He not? Enough said on that point…

Here I’m going to come out of the closet so to speak. I do question God’s goodness. I question His goodness daily, hourly, constantly. So do many many of the grieving parents with whom I converse but they are too afraid to say it. I am FURIOUS with God. Many of the tame thoughts I think toward Him and rants I scream at Him would likely have had me burned at the stake only a few hundred years ago. In our current Christian culture many of us feel like we aren’t allowed to question or doubt. Such thoughts place us outside of the circle of faith so to speak and invite unwanted lectures, sermons and ostracism. In the desperately fragile state of a bereaved parent we cannot afford such painful confrontations and we urgently need the support of our faith communities so silent we remain.

I question… I question everything. Do we really believe God is the almighty God of the universe? If so then why the urge to defend Him?  I suppose I’m banking everything on the belief that He will come through, that He can stand up to my questions, my doubt and my fury. If not, He’s not God. For now our relationship is beyond bad. As I told a friend recently “God has the obnoxious habit of refusing to fight with me.”  I don’t know where this will go but do I not deserve the room to seek the truth?

Please please, if you are one of the few trusted members of the support group of a bereaved parent who believes in God trust Him to do His thing and let them do theirs. Just love, listen, hug and don’t judge.    

focus

I’ve spent the last few weeks/months (?) caught in endless pounding waves of fury and hatred. There was little else I could feel… blinding pain – searing hate – blinding pain – searing hate. A few days (hours ?) ago the blinding pain screamed in my soul and I reached for the hate. It wasn't there. Until that moment and several very much like it I wasn’t aware that the hate had become a vicious, multiheaded, fire breathing guard dog. It protected me, in some small way, from the memories, from the pain. Now the raging fire has abated. The anger is still there, bigger and brighter than at any other time in my life but it is so much reduced from what it was. Again, I am left reeling… grappling with a flood of emotions, yet another new reality. Bone acing pain and nearly physically debilitating depression. Somewhere in my logical mind I recognize that my coping mechanisms are slowly being removed, layer by layer. I am being forced to look at the horror that is my life, that is my past, that is my future more and more head on. I miss the rage. Odd, I know. To any rational, sane, nongrieving person that sounds at least borderline psychotic but I was used to it and, like I said, it held off reality.

Maybe the most sickening realization about this recent shift is that it is just one of many many many cycles of debilitating pain, denial, anger and depression through which I will and have cycled. I go through them daily, weekly, monthly each layer wrapped within the other. Then on some large scale yet another wave of huge emotion rolls on. Denial wrapped in depression wrapped in anger wrapped in depression. Cycle upon cycle. I’m so unbelievably exhausted. Some days there is no room for hope, most days I can’t even fathom the concept.

I’ve started to try (emphasis on try) to focus on what I can do. My life is a huge bundle of can’ts. I can’t hold my baby. I can’t hear his laugh. I can’t see his smile. I can’t change what happened. I can’t understand anything. I can’t make up my mind about what is real or what is true. Some days I can’t get out of bed. I can’t cook for my family… on and on and on. So, what can I do? Not much in all honesty but I’ve had to decide on what to focus my extremely limited energy and free emotion. What matters? My man matters, my marriage matters. Here I am willing to fight, sometimes the energy isn’t there but he will always is. I can focus on telling my husband how much he means to me. I can focus on trying desperately to perform some outward expression of that love once a day. I can try. Isaiah matters. This one is harder. He is harder. He’s six, after all! Parenting is exhausting when the world is sunshine and roses when it’s tsunamis and choking blackness… ugh. So, what can I do for Isaiah? I can focus. Once a day, pull myself from the fog and focus on my son. Sounds like a big DUH but it is so hard.

Focus on what matters Jodie, let everything else slide. The dishes in the sink, the laundry, the floor that needs to be swept… you don’t have the energy for everything anymore so focus on what matters, period.     

so much worse

My eyes were torn open this morning by the sound of Damon’s squeal. Then the lava that refuses to consume poured into my chest. I wasn't awoken by my son. I will never wake to that sound again, never. That was stolen from me.

I keep thinking about how I was told it would get worse. How I read books and articles written by bereaved parents and there it always was ‘it gets so much worse.’ I think about how my shattered heart and mind simply could not comprehend anything worse than the tortures they were enduring. Then, I woke up the next morning… and the next… and the next. It gets so much worse.

He is gone, forever. I live in hell. I lay in bed with my sobbing six year old and have no words of comfort to offer. I watch my husband shuffle through life trying desperately to accomplish something, anything. I sink deeper and deeper into a pit of longing and despair. There is no comfort. There is no keeping my chin up.

It gets so much worse. 

unexpected companions

I’m falling in love with the Jewish people. At least with the writings I’ve devoured recently. I feel a community, an honestly, a ‘coming along with’ in the voices of these authors. The horrors and brutality of the Holocaust (to them Shoah) color their writing with unapologetic honesty. Here I find a sort of brotherhood in rejection of the ‘easy answers.’

I do not find comfort in the suffering of this people, my spiritual ancestors. Today, their suffering slices through me like white hot metal. I refuse to turn away. Oh, God, how could you?

My “brothers in suffering” offer no justification for their abandonment by God. They reject all attempts to insist that God always acts justly. How could anyone even propose such a thing to a child who was incinerated in a death camp or to a father who survived his wife and children? I would hope no one would dare but the insistent rejection by these who are telling their story tells me someone clearly has.

There are no easy answers. Sometimes there are NO EXPLAINATIONS. Sometimes it has to be ok to believe God has acted unjustly, whether it be true or not. Deep, horrific suffering cannot be explained away, minimized or smoothed over. Sometimes God’s action, or inaction sucks and doesn’t make any sense.

To these people who suffered inhuman atrocities I am intensely and achingly grateful. I am grateful for their painful honestly that I’m certain has heaped yet more cost onto a mountain of agony. To speak about a truth the world so desperately wants to forget. To feel as if their agony and history is a blip on everyone else’s happy and prosperous life. I know a touch of this, for them I feel an ever deepening love.     

Just cry

Today has been a day of tears. This morning the dam broke and weeks’ worth of anguish screamed out of me. Normally when this happens (wow, this is my normal) I spend the day in bed. I cry myself out then don’t move much for the rest of the day. Today I had commitments. So, for the first time I willed myself into composure and ‘did life,’ fell apart again, then ‘did life again’ and am currently in the midst of falling apart again.

Tonight I lay in bed with my six year old and held him while he cried a howling, gut wrenching, sobbing cry. He doesn’t understand why he needs to do this. He honestly doesn’t make the mental connection but I do. I know why he needs to cry. I know why every once in a while he just falls apart and sobs.

Tonight I sobbed with him. I said “Just cry baby. It’s ok, just cry.” I told him it’s ok to cry when you’re sad and you don’t even have to know why you’re sad. He clung to me fiercely and I held him as tight as I could. After a while his body stopped shaking. He rolled over and said “sometimes I just have to roll over to get compterble” and fell asleep.

a birthday and a funeral

I sat down here to write and the scene surrounding my computer screen is a painful depiction of my life. Just above the row of font and paragraph tools on my word processor sits a stack of books. This is not unusual in my house. To my left and right are shelves laden with books, literally bowing under the weight. But this stack of books speaks to pain, fear and desperation. “When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayer,” “Get Out of That Pit” and “A Grief Observed” are among the titles. Behind these stands a world of fantasy and adventure; “Eragon,” “The Fellowship of the Ring,” and “The Silvership and the Sea.” The latter has long sat untouched. I discovered early in this agonizing journey that the escape is not worth the price of return. I stay firmly in this world these days. The former group has been searched, scoured and discarded. There are no answers here.

To my left a topper for a birthday cake sits. Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Piglet bear gifts and balloons and, if I remember correctly, they sing too. It screams agonizing memories of happiness, of a future, of hopes shattered. I cannot touch it. I cannot move it. There it sits.

Further left is a stack of thank you cards, virtually untouched. How do I say thank you? I stare at the cards trying to pull words from my exhausted mind. They don’t come. Thank you for… that’s as far as I get. Inside the box is a stamp and an orange stamp pad. The stamp reads “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” I’ve tried… I can’t. The cold seeps into my bones and the water rises above my head. I can’t.

In a sickening representation of my reality a stack of birthday invitations from Damon’s first birthday is hidden beneath the Thank You cards. On the front is a big blue “D.” You can’t see them but I know they are there. I remember making them, hand writing each invitation, buying little zoo animal stickers to decorate them. There they sit, burning a hole in my soul.

And on the same desk sits a stack of cards from my baby’s funeral… not even a year after those happy birthday invitations were mailed we sat in a church with our son in a casket while friends and family wrote these notes.

This is a four by six foot space in my house. Every inch is the same, loss, pain, confusion is everywhere.

Today is a screaming day. This morning I sat in the car and sobbed and screamed until my throat hurt. I beat the dash and screamed some more.

Damon.

Food for thought

Just watched a documentary about happiness… I know, sounds kind of weird but I like documentaries. I like learning. I like being exposed to new perspectives and new information. This documentary centered around an emerging body of scientific research about that illusive state of mind called ‘happy.’

It was an hour and fifteen minutes long so there was a lot going on but in my impression there were a few major themes.

1)    Stuff doesn’t make people happy. Actually, quite the opposite. Once basic needs are met (and this is an important point) the pursuit of stuff actually makes people unhappy.  Interesting science…

2)    People who live in community are much happier than people who do not. Now, this isn’t people who live in a community this is people who live in community, meaning people who consistently, daily share their lives with a group of other people.

3)    Taking care of each other is pivotal. People who are happy focus on the world and caring for it and others, not on themselves… hmmm…. Sounds a lot like service to me.

It was crazy to watch this documentary centered entirely around dopamine receptors and psychology surveys say basically what a Jewish sage said two thousand years ago. Food for thought. 

Paint and leggos

I’ve been very functional lately. I think maybe the huge, gargantuan, massive relief that God didn’t take Isaiah from me may have propelled me into a bit of a “calm.” That coupled with my eldest’s need for constant post-surgical attention has kept me pretty firmly in mommy mode.

These days at home with a cuddly (and needy) six year old have given us a chance to reconnect. I think Isaiah has gotten some of the much needed attention he was missing and I’ve started to rediscover what it means to be mom.

But the few times I have moved into a period of… I don’t know what to call it… not bawling my eyes out every day? I’ve come to acknowledge when the wave crashes again that much of the “calm” was actually suppression. Don’t look at it, don’t acknowledge it, just keep moving. I’ve kept moving. I’m freaking exhausted.

Today Isaiah and I ventured out of the house to get supplies for one of my projects. In the store my heart nearly fractured with the effort it took to avoid looking at or feeling anything. When we got back to the house I couldn’t find my purchases. I have no idea where they went. Did I leave the store with them? Did I bring them inside? I have no memory of checking out, of leaving the store, of driving back to the house… apparently my paint got sucked into the void with my memory. I nearly screamed in frustration. This is what it is ALWAYS like. I can’t remember… why am I in this room? What was I about to say? Missing, pain and frustration piled on top of me.

Then Isaiah asked “Mommy, where are my leggos?” I almost puked. The answer? They’re in Damon’s room. Damon commandeered them a few months before he died. The kid LOVED leggos. They are still scattered willy-nilly about the house. I tend to leave them where they lie. I can’t move them. I couldn’t handle saying the words out loud so I changed the subject. Stellar parenting Jodie. 

Today = another epic fail. 

Mourn with those...

It’s happening again. Right now. Right at this very second there is a mommy sitting or standing or heck if she’s like I was literally on her face on the floor of her child’s hospital room, begging. Four hours ago she wrote “the neurologist said his MRI looks bad.” My throat closed with agony as I read those words, as memory of that moment flooded my consciousness. It’s happening again, to another family.

It happens every day. Since Damon died I see death everywhere. I see pain. I see suffering. I can’t not see it. So many people are suffering. So many mommies and daddies have said goodbye to their children. What the crap?

The thing that sickens me today is the knowledge that this is not new. It seems that literally every single day I hear or read of someone who has lost a beloved. Someone who is deeply mourning, who is plunging into depths of despair that will only get deeper. I read these stories now, maybe because I want these people to have a voice. Even if they don’t know me I want to know that someone shares in their suffering. I want to know that someone is hurting with them, even if that person has to be me. But six months ago I absolutely refused to let this kind of pain in. If I heard of such horrific loss I shut it out as soon and as much as I possibly could. Oh heaven forbid…  I probably said all sorts of stupid crap too. If not to the person then to myself.

I am convicted and ashamed that I refused to “mourn with those who mourn.” Not to my core, not in the way I believe the verse was intended. Because if you mourn you know how deep it goes, how much it saturates, how words cannot express the pain. I am blessed to have a community who is genuinely trying to mourn with me. Would I have had the courage to mourn with you? I hope so but I honestly don’t know.

In a culture that is increasingly pleasure saturated I beg you to see. I couldn’t or wouldn’t see the agony. I had to be plunged into the middle of it. As odd as it sounds I believe with all of my heart that as Christians we are called to feel deep agony, not superficial pain with those who are in agony. Please let it in. Don’t let us mourn alone. 

This is just my life

I’ve had to acknowledge in the past weeks that I’m “use to” this. I don’t wake in the middle of the night expecting to hear Damon cry. I don’t almost walk into his room in the morning to pick out his clothes. I don’t expect to get to pick him up any minute any more.

I ache no less. This may even hurt more. I expect the shooting, stabbing or gnawing pain. It doesn’t surprise me anymore. This is my reality. I feel as if I’ve been shot through with a harpoon. The spear dangles from the gaping wound in my chest. It’s weight ever painful and ever present. I’ve learned to carry the weight but the agony is no less.

I see the last stuffed animal he ever got. He picked it out himself. Every time I see it I see him holding it tucked under his little baby arm, smiling. I remember lunch that day with my grandparents, my Papa insisting Damon have the little stuffed lemur simply because his grandson wanted it. Damon threw crayons and forks and food through the whole meal. He always did.

I see the fingerprints on the sliding glass door and I remember him standing there watching his big brother play. I remember them matching their hands to each other across the glass. I would give anything for him to be there, dirty slimy baby hand on that glass staring back at me.

I walk past his room and see him asleep in his crib with his hands tucked under his little body, bottom in the air. I see his daddy zipping up his footie pajama’s over his baby belly and calling him ‘fat Elvis.’ I feel him heavy in my arms, drinking milk from his sippy cup while I sing “Holy Lord” and rock him before bed. I hear Will quietly sing a song that was only for his son.

I watch him play in the bathtub and remember cleaning poop out of the tub four times a week. I empty the dishwasher uninterrupted and feel utterly lost. I pull clothes out of the drier and remember that it was one of his favorite places to play. I see his giggling smiling face but I can’t touch him. I can’t hold him. He is gone forever.

There is no consolation. There is no comfort.

And I’m used to this. This is just my life. I am the mother of a dead child.

I told Will that I think maybe this is hell. I hear about people dyeing and I’m jealous. I am often reminded by the well intentioned that I still have Isaiah. I assure you I have never forgotten him. I also never forget Damon, ever.

This is just my life.   

New normal blows

I went to the grocery store near my house today. Small potatoes to you. Monumental feat of pain and endurance to me.

The very few times since Damon was ripped from my life that I have ventured into a grocery store I drove across town to the one that is unfamiliar, the one that my child never giggled and ate cookies and lived life in. I honestly think I’ve been to the grocery store a maximum of five times since my baby died. Memories… people… sights… sounds… ugh. It’s too much. I jump every time one of those women trying to sell me laundry detergent or shampoo shouts from a television hidden in an end cap. It’s freaking unnerving.  I’ve never gone with Isaiah… it’s like having half of a whole that just points to the missing piece.

Today I picked Isaiah up from school and, knowing that tomorrow he will have surgery and be down and out for days, set my sights on the store. Roughly a million times I started to turn back but I went. Isaiah and I walked in and got a cart. He climbed onto the end and talked happily. I stared at the empty child seat in front of me. I stared at the bakery where we used to always go first to get each of the boys a cookie before diving into the chaos that is shopping. Ugh… this sucks people. I hurt! I don’t want ‘new normal.’ New normal freaking blows. I want old normal back.

But I survived. I actually did one better than survive. I talked with my first born in that easy language of familiarity that I thought was innate, until it became impossible. I didn’t have to stifle a scream. I didn’t burn with impatience. As we passed the baby section the panic and pain rose in my throat and threatened to strangle me but Isaiah’s easy conversation drew me back from the ledge. Unlike what has become so familiar, closing vision, raging pulse, choking breath, I managed.

It wasn’t good. It didn’t feel good. I wonder if I will ever be able to describe life that way again.

My big accomplishment is spending thirty minutes in a grocery store without having a panic attack. Six months ago I balanced my life and the lives of all my guys. I want old normal back. I miss my son. This sucks. 

Marriage

I don’t acknowledge how incredible my man is nearly enough. I love him. I miss him. I adore him.

I remember somewhere through the haze realizing or being told that the divorce rate for parents who lose a child positively sky rockets. At the time, some months ago, I thought ‘That’s insane! How could anyone ever let go of the one person who understands? The one person who hurts as much as they do? The one person who knows?’

Since then I’ve slowly started to get it. No, Will and I are not separating or divorcing or not speaking or anything like that, No! But I sooooo get it. There are so many things I get now that I wish I didn’t… the list keeps getting longer. I ask God often ‘will you not leave any wound with which I cannot deeply empathize?’

There are so many layers to this one and more are mined every day.

The thing is it’s painful to be together, truly together, hearts open and bonded to each other. It’s painful because the throbbing in my heart multiplies his and vice versa. It’s nearly impossible to breathe most days and then to see your beloved in debilitating agony… unbearable doesn’t begin to describe it.

Navigating that chasm is beyond human ability. We have each long been each other’s comforter, back rubber, soothing word speaker, sounding board, secret keeper and lover. Now, the constant undercurrent of pain breeds exhaustion which leads to impatience and the negativity snowballs. Each hurting too much to be of any comfort we do a dance of relearning how to communicate. It’s a battle fought with weary limbs.

I can see how this could go to a very bad place, fast. I get why marriages don’t survive this. I get why mothers and fathers don’t survive, let alone have the strength to hold on to each other amid the riptides and tsunamis.

And I’ve realized that he doesn’t know, neither do I. As close as we are as much as we each love Damon I don’t get his loss and he doesn’t get mine. That was a sickening revelation. I started to notice that many of the places that cause me great suffering and many of the daily moments that send me hurling down the black chasm of pain pass him unnoticed. Because his routine and mine were wholly different. The life I lived with Damon was full of everyday routine, breakfasts, school drop offs and pickups, grocery stores, parks, and cooking. Most days Will wasn’t present for these things… his ache, his triggers, his missing is completely different and no less awful.

This produces further isolation, ‘you don’t get it!’ Ugh, and there is no denying that fact.

There is no recipe. There is no ‘right’ answer. I’m becoming painfully aware that those simple explanations and formulas in which I took comfort just aren’t real. Real pain, real life, real grief is not simple.

The other day on the radio I heard “life is complicated, God is not.” I almost screamed. I have to disagree. God is very very complicated as is my relationship with Him.

At present He and I are in a place of ‘betweeness’ I think my concept of Him is undergoing a complete overhaul. I’m picking up every splinter of my shattered faith one at a time, examining it and determining if it should stay or go. If it should stay it gets tucked back into my heart, though into a disheveled pile, if it should go it gets cast away. This is a long and painful process wrought with stops and starts, fury, confusion and gut wrenching realizations.

One of the things I have recognized with certainty is my need for Him. Some days that just pisses me off. Some days He is the last ‘person’ in the world I want to need. I’m down right irate. ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ But I do need Him and much to my confusion even when I don’t want to need Him if I go to Him He fulfills that need.

 Confusing, I know!

I think I’m starting to ‘get’ “Be still and know that I am God.” I don’t think the “knowing” is even remotely intellectual, at least not in my case. I’ve never been more confused about who or what or where God is. I am learning the inexpendable value of stillness in His presence. I quiet my mind and I slip into a place that is wholly other. Here He fills me. I don’t understand it. I don’t have to. I don’t think I can but only here do I gain the ability to be the woman, the wife, I want to be even when my heart is torn to pieces.  

How could there ever be anything else?

I sat in the parking lot of Isaiah’s school and cried this morning. He was late, again. I just can’t get it together. I just can’t make myself give a crap about tardys and the pledge of allegiance. It’s just so hard to remember what to do in the morning. What do you need for school kid? Ugh, let me think… It’s like slogging through mud while being whined at by a very grumpy mini-me.

After another whirlwind morning where I came away feeling like I need the ‘suckiest mom of the year’ award I stumbled to the car, plopped my rear in the seat and bawled. I sat there staring at the school where just a few months ago I would sit in my car with my baby waiting for my happy kindergartener to emerge. Now everything has changed.

Smiles are painful work for me now and my happy kindergartener is a morose first grader, my baby is gone forever. Depression wraps its cloak around me and I wonder, “How could there ever be anything else?” 

Emptiness returns

Sadness hangs like a shroud around my shoulders, draping over my back and puddling on the floor at my feet. The hood of this cloak hangs low veiling my face and when I try to walk the fabric tangles in my feet. It is the heaviest material I’ve ever known to exist. It resists every movement, draining precious energy from my exhausted limbs.

Saturday, God poured something into me as I lay beneath His display of majesty and my shoulders lifted under the cloak. Whether they knew it or not, hundreds of people ducked under this shroud of darkness and helped me lift it enough to raise my sagging head. And I danced… for Damon.

Today, that miraculous strength is waning and the shroud is resettling itself around my body. It’s hard to breathe, hard to think, nearly impossibly painful to remember what it felt like to hold him in my arms. Emptiness returns.

But I got a breath…

You're living proof

Today was amazing…

The world tells us that we can’t make a difference, that there’s no point in doing good. The world is wrong.

Today you proved that.

We raised over fivethousand dollars!!!! FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS! Add that to the nearly three thousand you’ve already donated and eight families will soon attest to the fact that we MADE A DIFFERENCE. They will be able to say we helped bring their child home. Can you fathom that?

Tonight one family already can attest to the difference you make.

Today has been nothing short of miraculous. Starting with the majesty God let me witness this morning followed by an entire day with no panic attacks, no sobbing melt downs and no emotional lock downs. I wish I could make it clear how impossible such a thing seemed yesterday. I had fun today. I am in awe of you today. I am honored and blessed by you today.

Don’t tell me God’s children can’t make a difference. You’re living proof.

Majesty

God woke me this morning at 5am. He woke me with a dream about Damon. These always shake me wide awake, breathless, heart pounding, adrenaline pumping. I got to hold my baby in my dream. He was laughing. The warmth that spreads through me when I write those words is simply indescribable. So, I’ll just leave it at that. I said to him over and over and over “I love you. I love you.” He said it back in his sweet toddler language. These are not words he ever spoke in life. Before last night I had never heard my son tell me he loves me.

When I woke I lay there, stone still not wanting the vision to fade. I kept saying it “I love you. I love you.” I felt the tug outside. When God wakes me He almost invariably calls me outside. I’m not sure why but I can hear Him so much better out there. I resisted, afraid if I moved I would lose my hold on Damon. Finally, His call became too much and I made my way to the porch.

I sat there bathing in the memory and the feeling of peace that it brought still intoning “I love you. I love you.” endlessly under my breath. I love you, I love you!

Damon Ray, I love you.

I kept feeling a tug, further, deeper. Don’t stop at the porch child, keep coming. I felt the urge to go lay in the middle of my front lawn. There were lighting flashes streaking through the still darkened sky and there was only one star I could see. I knew if I went and laid in the lawn ‘my star’ would dip beneath the trees and be lost to me. So, I resisted.

Finally I gathered my quilt around me and stepped out of the shelter of my porch. The sight that greeted me is… inexpressible. The sky was as I have never seen before, never. I tried to describe it to Will this morning and the words sounded flat and empty as they tumbled one after another over my tongue. It cannot be described. It cannot. It was magnificent and terrifying and beautiful. I laid there feeling very small and infinitely loved huddled in my blanket against the chill. I don’t think the sky has ever looked like that before and I don’t think it ever will again. I witnessed majesty and I am in awe.  

8-24-12

Yesterday sucked… sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked. It sucked.

I remember getting in trouble for that word. There are probably quite a few who still find it offensive but there is no other word. It sucked.

I had spent the better part of the month in the sick black waste of dread. Like a prisoner sitting in a cell, locked in fetters waiting for the upcoming date of execution. Only I don’t get to die. I just have to do it all over again… in October, in November, oh God… in December. You get the picture.

We released balloons in the morning before Isaiah went to school. As I watched them catch the swirling upper air and weave around each other the tears started. They washed hot down my face most of the walk to Isaiah’s school but they were nothing compared to what was to come.

I haven’t sobbed for that many hours in a row in months. I haven’t screamed and clawed and choked on my own spit in a long time. Tears puddled on my lap as Will and I sat huddled on the couch watching Damon dance on the computer screen, watching him coo and smile as an infant. Watching all that we have left of my precious child.

I scrawled his name, as big as I could write it, on or front sidewalk. Next to it I wrote his birthdate. We looked at the few pages of his scrapbook I’ve managed to complete. I didn’t even make it past the hospital before I got to damn busy. We saw me standing there in my gown, big as a house. We read the letters we wrote to him. Letters meant for him to read as he grew, to know the story of his birth, to know how much he was treasured. We saw the pictures of our newborn son…  I am sick with pain.

A friend sent us a package just after Damon’s death. I don’t remember exactly when it arrived… days are still a muddle and that time is just an ocean of nothing and everything. Inside the package was an acorn, a pot, soil and directions for planting the little seed that will one day become an oak. We planted it. I don’t remember the planting but I remember the feeling. It has grown since then, sitting next to the kitchen sink by a little window. According to the instructions about this time it should be planted in the ground. We rent our house. We are not leaving that tree.

So yesterday we went and bought an enormous barrel style pot and bags and bags of potting soil. I actually read the directions for planting a tree printed on the bags. Anyone who knows me well knows that is unusual. I never have the patience to read directions… are you serious? That’s what the pictures are for. I read the directions.

We reverently repotted our little tree. It now stands a little sprig of green in an ocean of brown soil, next to our dining room table. I love that little tree. We put Damon’s orange pinwheel in the soil next to the tree. He used to run back and forth between us beckoning us to blow so the wheel would spin. Often one of us didn’t get it spinning fast enough for his liking so he was off to the other parent with impatience. I miss him.

We ate his favorite foods for dinner. Hamburger helper lasagna, oreos, pretzels, popcorn, and cheetos. Will carved a ‘birthday cake’ out of watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe topped with grapes (the first solid food Damon would eat). “It’s an unconventional cake because it’s an unconventional birthday” Will said, “there has to be a cake.”

Isaiah wanted to sing happy birthday and couldn’t understand why all our friends weren’t over to celebrate. He wanted a party and this tearful, somber meal was not up to his expectations. It’s hard to be a parent when you’ve got nothing inside… or maybe nothing would be better.

  

We did it all… what else is there to do on a day that should have been a celebration. Nothing is right, nothing is good but you can’t do nothing. So, we did something. The something was painful and empty but we couldn’t do nothing.

We survived but it doesn’t feel like a good thing.

I thought maybe today would be better. We passed the first ginormous hurdle… It’s not better. Maybe at some point I will stop setting my hopes on some moment or event to bring relief. Relief never comes. As my sister in loss said this morning “We just keep lamenting… it’s all … all we have.”

Sorry

I feel like I need to apologize. No, I don’t feel like I need to. I do, constantly.

Isaiah, I’m sorry baby. I’m sorry I can’t play. I’m sorry I have no patience. I’m sorry we can’t go to the park or the Wondertorium. What you don’t understand is that just to say these words is taking everything I have. I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I’m sorry.

Every regret I have about Damon is currently being lived out in my relationship with Isaiah.

Why didn’t I play with him more? Laugh with him more? Slow down… tickle more… hold him more?

Now I can barely interact with my precious living child. I want to but I can’t.

Will, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I can’t cook dinner and fill our house with home. I’m sorry I can’t laugh and smile and debate with you. I’m sorry I can’t get out of bed. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I want to but I can’t. I’m sorry I’m not the woman you married. I love you so much. I’m sorry.

Damon, I’m sorry I didn’t protect you. I’m sorry I didn’t hold you enough. I’m sorry I gave a crap about my education or the state of the damn floor. I miss you. I love you so much. I’m sorry.

World, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t converse. I’m sorry I can’t join. I’m sorry I can’t care…

I fail. What will I lose now? Everything it seems because I died with my child and I can’t seem to figure out how to live again.

Empty. 

What if?

One of if not the central complaint the vast majority of those who ‘lose their faith’ (whatever that actually means) is the suffering in the world. Its horrible, intense and very very real. I’m so guilty of just shutting it out. Starving children? Well, there’s not really anything I can do about it and my world is perfectly happy so… I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear that, or see that. Genocide? Torture? Oppression? Well, not here in the great United States… except yeah, just not on my block.

Damon’s death shook me awake and for the life of me I can’t go back under the anesthesia. I see. I recently read about a teacher killed in a Compton school by a stray bullet while teaching in his classroom, students on lock down because of violence in nearby neighborhoods and children leaving a house where a mother hanged herself in despair.

There are children in some nations who travel miles from their parents and villages to sleep in town squares where they can be safe from militants who would slaughter their families before their eyes to take them as child soldiers.

W-R-O-N-G

Many point to these atrocities as evidence of a world with no God, or at least not one who gives a crap. I wrestle with this. If You are good, how can you let these horrors happen? Its so wrong.

A thought occurred to me. What if those of us to claim to follow the example of Christ were more about doing than believing? What if we defined ourselves by the fact that we love, not as in the noun but as in the verb? Rather than defining that we do or don’t ‘believe’ in instrumental music or one cup? The more than TWO BILLION of us?

What if instead of defending the status quo we attacked it? What if we took seriously Jesus’ teachings about caring for the poor, for the widows and orphans? What if we vehemently refused to allow inhumane acts to go unchallenged? What if every single one of us two billion ‘little Christs’ found even one person to help, personally, intimately? How would the world be changed?

No, not all suffering would cease, obviously. My son died because he got sick. He was not denied medical care, he did not have to drink contaminated water, he always had enough to eat. We are suffering, powerfully, deeply and often debilitatingly. Even if we all did our part suffering would continue. But not all suffering, not most suffering I’d contend.

I’m greatly challenged by this. For most of my life I’ve walked around in my insulated world much more afraid of ‘outsiders’ than desiring to do true good, to make a real change, to work hard to make this world better. Do I have the courage to do something about it?        

Permission

I went to the counselor today. Its always kind of astonishing to me how much crap pours out of me in that room, how much stuff is there boiling and churning right under the relatively placid surface. Its not that I don’t know there is pain and rage and denial and confusion all swirling inside of me I’m just amazed by how much is in here and by the forms it takes. Call me feminine but there is so much I just can’t figure out until it comes out of my mouth, or occasionally, off of my fingertips.

Just saying things outloud has a healing affect, like purging something rancid from my soul. But instead of being able to avoid the spoiled food and, therefore, its harmful effects my soul makes it, churning it out by the gallon. The need to vomit never ends.  

Today, while the ridding myself of poison was important and healing the thing that had the most profound impact was something that came in my ears, not out my mouth.

I told my counselor how isolated I feel, how crippled and paralytic, how every single every day activity is excruciating and how I feel like the world just spins and I can’t seem to get on. I don’t even want to. How I want so much to be able to do things and feel something other than blinding pain and remember my beautiful amazing son without collapsing to the floor. How there is no moment or area of my life that is even remotely similar to my life before Damon died. There is no place where the memory of him does not dance across my eyes. How I still have anxiety attacks and fits of uncontrollable rage and I watch everyone around me plan trips and get togethers and life. I am an outsider. I am utterly isolated.

She told me that she would be surprised and even a little suspicious if I had moved beyond these feelings. She said that she would be surprised if I moved to a season of ‘acceptance’ in the first year at all.

You might think that this would be discouraging or devastating news. Maybe tomorrow it will be but today it is such a relief. I guess I felt like I was supposed to be ‘getting’ somewhere I wasn’t ‘getting’ to. ‘When will you feel better?’ ‘When will you be normal?’ ‘When will you do….?’ Not now, not for a long long time from now.

I feel like I was given permission to grieve.  

a lie

I’ve been thinking (wipe that exaggerated ‘oh, I’m so shocked’ look off of your face. I can feel the sarcasm from here). The bible is pretty brutal, brutally truthful. From the faults and failures of the patriarchs (and let me just say, wow!) to the denial of Peter there are no pulled punches.

It seems to me that first, no human outside of Holy Spirit inspiration would be that honest. I would think there would be strong temptation to ‘pretty up’ the story. Do you think the gospel writers stomachs turned as they penned the details of Peter’s denial? Peter… a focal point and leader of the New Testament church. Or perhaps less condemningly but incredibly embarrassing the continual cluelessness of the apostles throughout Jesus’ ministry. “Who will be the greatest?” That kind of honesty took serious humility and that kind of humility is inhuman… at least I think so.

What if they had done what we do? What if they had put on their “church clothes” and plastic smiles and answered every question with “fine, how are you?” Where on earth would we be today? How many believers have been comforted or saved by the truth of these stories? By the embarrassing truth.

Paul tells us blatantly that we are told the Old Testament stories so that we will not be lead into the same temptations. We are told so we can learn from their mistakes.

When did we stop doing this? When did we stop being transparent?

In Judges it seems that one generation would turn to God then the next would be horrifyingly unfaithful. Did they fail to tell their children the horrors they had experienced? Were they too embarrassed or too proud to be honest? Are we? Am I?

How on earth can I hope to help anyone, to help anyone learn from my (many) mistakes if I refuse to be embarrassingly honest?

“Fine, how are you” Gag…

Then it hit me. Not only does this damage those around me and isolate me it is a lie. Is that a ‘whoa’ moment for anyone else? It’s a lie…  

A socially acceptable lie. Really a socially expected and almost required lie but a lie. 

Whoa.  

Paralytic

I’ve become a paralytic. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me but I have. I don’t function. Nothing works. I used to be the mommy. I did it all. I never realized how much I did or how defined I was by being the central whirlwind of this home.

I rose early and fed a baby, dressed him and chased him all over the house. I packed a little boy’s lunch and found library books and poured cereal. I filled sippy cups and kissed booboos and chased bare bottoms through the house with diapers. I was exhausted and often not nearly grateful enough for my beautiful life… all before 8 a.m.

I dropped a curly headed baby off at school, reluctant to leave, watching him every second until the door closed. He would sit there, fruit loops clasped in both of his dimpled baby hands, content. He very rarely cried when I left… no, that was me. I hated leaving him. Then back in the car and off to another school, gathering back packs and lunch boxes, hand holding across the parking lot, forehead kisses and ‘I love you, mom!’

Back to the house because I had forgotten ten things I needed for school. A day of teaching and learning and researching. Pushing and stretching and working.

Pick up two little boys, banana snacks in sweet baby hands, strollers and bikes and a walk to the park, giggles and chasing and a million ‘to-do’s’ running through my mind. Back to the house, a dinner to cook, “daddy’s home!” A trio of my guys running through the house, tickling and wrestling and getting in the way. A baby at my feet crying to be held, cooking, straining and chopping one handed, precious cargo on my left hip.

Dinner then clean up then off to the bath, footie pajama’s and lotion and sweet baby smells, stories and songs then do it again but bigger and older the second time around. Then quiet and breathing and homework to do… late into the night. Tomrrow it will start all over again….

Until it didn’t.

Now I am a paralytic. I search for a mat to lay down on. Will someone lower me through a hole in the roof? Where is the roof? Where is the healer? I don’t know… I am a paralytic.