The Geography of Loss

“And the love is free…” I came upon this phrase in an Aussie cookbook written by a daughter about her mother.

I grieve that as time passes, it seems more and more unlikely that the love will be free. Free of recriminations, of judgement, of past mistakes as swords held over the other’s head, of cruel hurtful words remembered and begrudgingly watered for eons to flower into massive weeds of unhappiness.

I grieve my father, now dead 16 years. I grieve for a mother who floundered in the aftermath, who escaped into bitterness and resentment and never really made it back. I grieve that I’m more like him than anyone else, and that makes me an outcast. I grieve every time I am painted into a corner, with no one on my side.

Most of all, I grieve for the inability to break free. 

What might have happened if things had gone as planned? 

What might have we said, done, attempted together, laughed at, eaten and savored, taken in, if things has gone as planned?

Would I have told you how I felt, if things had gone as planned? That I was firmly in love with you, my best friend, and that I had been since that winter when you told me you would fly across the world for me. No one had ever said that for me before. No one has said that for me since.

I keep wondering. Did you feel the same way then? Do you feel that way now? Do you mean what you said then about marriage and love? Do you mean what you say about it now?

Would our friendship have blossomed into something more passionate, if things had gone as planned?

The anniversary looms near. The anniversary of our meeting, if things had gone as planned.

I’ve lost hope.  I’ve tried to adapt my body and my mind, but my spirit is crushed. Suicide has been whispering in my ear.

My body changed when a growth was found on my spine. The neurosurgeon was not concerned about paralysis, from the surgery, but I would die. I survived the surgery, but the recovery has been tremendously hard. I missed an entire year of work. And pain remains. My constant companions are loss: Loss of movement, strength, stamina, independence and creativity. Eight years. 

I have done everything I should do.  I have returned to teaching part-time as I knew my body was not strong enough for full-time, but being with my students would be good for my mind and soul.  I have done weekly physiotherapy, daily exercises, massage, acupuncture, steroid injections for pain and more. I am loved and respected in my community; I give to others. I have a wonderful support in my family and friends. To feed my creative void: I have taken up photography with my iPhone. I try to find the beauty in the ordinary.

Yet, I am no longer the person I once was.  I am unable to do the things I love and desire, because of lack of energy and strength, as well as finances.  I tire easily. I am unable to explore, as I did before, because my part-time job doesn’t even cover my bills. 

Through all this recovery, I knew something was still wrong.  My body felt off and my spirit was low. This past year, more tests were done.  In one year after the surgery, the growth on my spine was back and it was larger.  The experts don’t know what to do.  I am devastated.

I’ve had a hard time carrying on.  I have experienced a great deal in my life and have experienced loss.  But the loss of hope is devastating.  There is a darkness in my soul and the light seems so far away.  It seems, at times, that suicide is the only glint of hope for rest and peace.  Only four people know the depths of my loss and grief. 

Perhaps the Phoenix moment will arrive soon…I hope.  I want to come out stronger, more defined, grace-full and lit with hope.  Right now, I am not sure how.  So, I rest, listen to my body, reach out to others and take out my iPhone camera and try to find the beauty in the little things.

I hate baby showers. I don’t want to sniff candy bar “poo” and try to guess the culprit. I do not want to wax philosophical on how long it is ok to breastfeed or pretend that it is perfectly normal for a five year-old to walk up to his momma and ask for some milky. I’ve reached an age where people think it’s abnormal that I do not have children. They wonder if my marriage is on the rocks. Sometimes I tell them there is just too much crazy in my family – we have the invite to Jerry Springer to prove it. Other times I tell them I am selfish and I really like to sleep-in on the weekends or kids would seriously impede my crack habit. I’ve considered printing-up cards with various excuses and explanations so I don’t have to go into the spiel but I’m too lazy. I grieve because I cannot not have children. I wish people would stop looking at me as though I were contagious.  

My Dad died two weeks after my partner and I adopted our beautiful girl.  She’s so much like him - goofy, strong, a dreamer.  I try, as best I can, to make him real for her, to give her her Grandpa Brian.

To make him real for her, I have to make him real for me again.  I relive my Daddy’s girl childhood and miss him all over again.

It’s been 10 years, almost to the day and I cry for myself, for my daughter, for my Dad and all the missed opportunities for us to be a family.

It’s not holidays and birthdays that I navigate on the map of loss.  It’s the everyday moments, marking growth charts, swimming lessons, first bike rides and falls, watermelon seed spitting contests and barbequed hamburgers.  All the ordinary parts of a complete childhood that the two people I love most in the world will never share.

I grieve the relationship I could have had with my mother if I hadn’t chosen to direct my rage at her when my daddy died of a heart attack. It was he, not Mother, who decided to stay in our small town to heal after his “warning heart attack” rather than seek advanced coronary care in the city.   I have spent a lifetime regretting the blame I loaded on Mother when she had suffered a loss as heavy as steel on concrete.  Mother was widowed at 43, left with a sweet 11-year-old boy and a wild, headstrong 15-year-old daughter determined to rule her own life.  How deeply I must have hurt her. 

Mother was as stoic as Jackie Kennedy later.  She expected me to be strong, to continue with my duties as Y-Teen president and cheerleader.  “Your daddy would have wanted you to carry on,“ she insisted. 

But I took my stand and said “No, he wouldn’t.”  I had been told I was like him, and I clung to that like a parachute as I fell from the sky. I loved my mother—she sacrificed for her children her chance at a new life.  But during those years after Daddy’s death, my resentment stewed like peanuts in scalding water.

Mother was raised by a stern Scots Presbyterian mother and a rigid Southern Baptist father who served as county sheriff.  She spent her life trying to please her mother and was baffled why I would not bow to her wishes for me. I never saw her being close to her mother, leaving me pathless to know how to be close with mine.  It was a battle of the wills.

What I wouldn’t give to pull Mother into my arms now, tell her of my admiration, love and gratitude for what she did for me. I gave her beloved grandchildren.  I was a dutiful daughter— there for her when she grew sick and died.  But I wish I had crawled in bed with her at the end and held her until she crossed into the light.

Now, with grown daughters of my own, I long even more to create the relationship I didn’t have with my mother—but they sometimes resent me as much as I resented her.  I study the Dharma to learn how to end this samsara and cherish each other in this life.  My new granddaughter inspires me to pull the generations together.

written by J. Gail Livingston

Sense of Place

My incredible grief turns on the loss of a sense of place. The small towns have dried up—no jobs, boarded-up storefronts, graffiti slashing across my high school’s windows.  The family old place is up for sale, but today’s families don’t want that old rambling ginger-breaded house where my father grew up.   

People are part of place, too.  Nobody stays put anymore. Where once I had grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins by the dozen, now everyone I knew is in the little cemetery up the road.  Faded silk flowers and monuments with bird droppings mark their resting places.  Their houses stand empty and their children have moved away.  But every wrinkle they wore and every hug they gave me rest like feathers in my gunnysack of memories. I miss them all so much. 

Never a holiday comes—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July— my heart doesn’t break, remembering the times the family gathered.  Scents sear my hidden places.  I smell the roasting turkey, see the aunts in the kitchen making potato salad and baking cakes.  The men stand around the grill where the eldest uncle mops the chicken with his secret sauce on the Fourth.  Everybody laughs and talks at once, telling the old, old family stories that teach the children who our people were.

I yearn for the girl I was—my naivety, my pain, the fun we had.  My innocence was lost on Halloween 1959, when I was barely 15.  My idol, my beloved father, died of a heart attack.   To say I grieved trivializes my agony.  I couldn’t wait to grow up and move away.  Dylan Thomas wrote, “After the first death there is no other.” But, somehow, I thought everyone I loved would stay there, that I could always go home again to that little town where I grew up— where they grew old and died.

Webb was flawed I know now, and we who grew up there had to find our own paths to a wider world.  But my love for that place runs deep and rich like a vein of ore.  The safety and innocence we shared still holds our roots in fertile soil, though we took flight.

“To the outside world we all grow old.  But not to brothers and sisters.  We know each other as we always were.  We know each other’s hearts.  We share private family jokes.  We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys.  We live outside the touch of time.”  - Unknown
-Laura Gilbow
 
To be a young adult sibling left behind has to be one of the most complex feelings known to the human race. We not only grieve the loss of our sibling in the present day, we grieve the loss of the one who was supposed to witness our life in its entirety. In a sense, I am not only grieving the loss of my brother too early. I am also grieving the missed opportunity to bury him in his old age. These days, I am grieving the adult relationship we did not have – the one that was just beginning to bloom. I was only 21 after all. And just as 19 is too young to buried, 21 is too young to bury your brother. While I know that the pain of losing a sibling must be severe and confusing no matter what age the loss occurs, I can’t help but think that I could have lost him more peacefully at age 82…  
 
Of course at that age he would probably be using oxygen or fighting lung cancer due to his 68 years of smoking. At that age we would have already buried our parents – Paul would be talking about the time when he had to start secretly mowing the lawn for dad because “dad was too stubborn to admit he couldn’t do it any more – so I had wait till he and mom went to church on Sunday mornings. Then I’d sneak over there real fast and mow it. Of course, dad eventually caught on and by then he said ‘you might as well keep on with it.’” I’d be reminiscing about my chats with mom as she got older, “maybe she had been a little confused there at the end…but still always so kind to everyone around her.” Maybe one of us would be living in that house we were both born and raised in (the same house I had only recently left and Paul was still living in the day he died). He’d be showing me pictures of his daughter, Analice, and her family — his little grandchildren — and beaming with pride as he gazed at all the pictures hanging all over the walls in his bedroom (because if you knew Paul, you know that those pictures would be ALL OVER his house). We might discuss his final wishes; make his funeral arrangements ahead of time. He and I would laugh about how he dropped the groceries upon walking into the house at the surprise 50th birthday party I organized for him 32 years ago. We might even talk solemnly about the hard times, shed some tears over the pain that life had brought us through the years. And then, as he took his last breath, I would shed my own tears over the loss of a brother that had been with me through all those years. Thank the Lord for his protective hand, his quirky sense of humor, and his wonderful grandfathering skills.
 
But I don’t get those years.
 
And I can’t help but think that if I had, this grief would be much different – much more easily processed. It would be an expected grief. A grief that is a normal part of the life process. It would be combined with the satisfaction of living a long full life of growing up and growing old together. 
 
These days, I am grieving a confusing greif. One that my psyche just can’t quite conceptualize. 
 
Just for clarification (because after 5 years, people who mean well but don’t quite understand sometimes give me that “worried” look), I’m not saying that I live in total despair over this fact in my daily life. Nor am I saying that I am anything but incredibly thankful for the 19 years I didget to witness of his life, (and that he got to witness of mine). If I had to choose whether to have him as a brother and have this grief again, or to never have him and all and never have this grief… well of course you know I would still choose to have him as my brother.
 
 I think of the above quote pretty often and how on one hand, I was cheated out of the experience it describes – how I won’t ever have someone who knows me in that way. On the other hand, I think  of the last sentence, “We live outside the touch of time,” and how it takes on a whole new meaning when applied to my situation. It means that as I continue to age, my brother will still be with me. Whether it is through his daughter, through the pictures I keep, the memories I have, a vivid dream, or the feeling of his presence so close that I swear if I turned around he would be standing right there, looking down at me with that ornery smirk on his face. Our relationship will never cease. Never. I will always know him as he was. He will never stop being my brother; I will never stop being his sister. That’s why you often hear me refer to Paul in the present tense. Because though his time on earth is complete, his time as my brother has only just begun.
 

It’s your 24th birthday. My how time flies.
You know, even though it has been 24 years since you were born, you are forever 19. That kind of sucks.

Sometimes I’m angry that you were taken so young, other times I am grateful that if it was imperative for you to be taken young, at least it was sooner rather than later. It has spared your daughter the pain of losing you, after all. She was too young to really miss you now.
Then I feel guilty for thinking that, because maybe it would have been better for her to have at least some genuine memory of you.
Which one is better?
I wonder.
Neither, I suppose.
I’ll never be able to reconcile these thoughts, so I accept the thoughts themselves, accept the fact that I’ll never know the answers, and let them go.

Your daughter! I’ll bet sometimes Mom and Dad are PISSED at you for leaving them to take care of her. She can throw a tantrum like none I’ve ever seen, and is more hard-headed than a block of cement, I think.
She’s so bright - asks questions that blow me away. And possesses a sensitivity for the needs of others that is way beyond her years: “You don’t have one, Auntie Laura? You can have mine.” That sensitivity and generosity remind me of you.
Those brown eyes remind me of you too.

Ah, your 24th birthday. What to do with myself today?
I might light your candle, maybe look at your pictures, probably cry.
I’ll write you a letter.
I’ll read the Compassionate Friends’ March newsletter and touch your name printed in tiny black and white letters on the “Our Children Remembered” page. I’ll look at that and still have some sense of the surreal. He can’t really be gone, can he?
I won’t visit your grave because I live 150 miles away from it. I might think about the grave stone, of that little “-” between your birth and death dates, and recall a vaguely familiar poem that talks about how the beginning and ending don’t mean much… how the “-” is the part that REALLY matters.
But that doesn’t negate the fact that birthdays are important, does it? Millions of dollars are spent on birthday celebrations throughout the year. How do we celebrate birthdays for those who are with us? Balloons and cake? Gifts? Parties?
Of course!
So…what about for those who are not with us? Does their birthday lose importance suddenly when they die? Because they are no longer physically among us are they suddenly unworthy of celebration?
Not a chance.

I’m a little jealous, you know. You got to leave first. You always were one step ahead of me.

So…what to do with myself today?
I’ll go to class, I’ll talk with my classmates, I’ll do my homework, I’ll text my mom, I’ll eat lunch with my boyfriend, I’ll talk to my friends. I’ll talk with some of those people about the fact that it’s your 24th birthday, but not with all of them.
I’ll keep my ordinary day, my ordinary behavior, my ordinary schedule. I can’t imagine you wanting me to do anything other than going on about my ordinary day. So, that’s what I will do.

Except…

Except that I will still celebrate your birthday. Not with balloons, or cake, or parties. But with something that hazily reminds me of hope. I’ll wake up and realize that I must have survived it all because I am still here. I am still breathing, and — for whatever reason — I am still moving throughout my days with relative ease.
For the whole day, I’ll keep you with me. I’ll bet you’re thrilled to pieces to know that.
Yes sir, during my ordinary day, you’ll come along. And you will like it. Or else.
In my thoughts. In my tears. In the eyes of some tall dude that slightly resembles you. In my stubborn resolve to pass this class. In that song on my iPod. In my time taken listening to a friend’s troubles. Maybe I’ll find a guitar pick. I periodically find them lying on the ground in random places and say “thanks” because I think they’re probably from you.

I guess in some ways, I celebrate your birthday every day.

Again… I’m jealous. A birthday party every day?
Dang, you have all the luck.

Happy 24th.

Love,

Laura

First, like a tsunami: I pretty much just had to hang on. There was no other choice. JUST. HANG. ON.
 
Next, like a roller coaster: I got on it voluntarily albeit reluctantly because I was afraid. I could have chosen to avoid it alltogether through a little something we Social Workers like to call “denial.” However I knew that I should let myself experience it, and that I had a fairly fairvorable chance of coming off of it alive because I had seen other people come out on the other side. So I got on… up and down, side to side. Some easier moments, some whip lash, the terrifying anticipation of the climb coupled with some heart-wrenching drops. A few bumps and bruises. Maybe one or two dark tunnels. Generally scary the whole way through. When I got off I felt dizzy and like I was going to vomit on my shoes. But I did, in fact, make it out alive, so I got on it again.
 
Also, like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. You know, navigate carefully and plan ahead…take a bag of sand just in case. REALLY proud of myself for acheiving the goal (yay bag of sand!), then it all comes crashing down around me, some jerk steals my whip and I get chased my a giant rock. I DO get out alive… but Harrison Ford wasn’t there. 
 
Like… a leg amputation. I am forever changed. A piece of me is missing, one that I will never get back. Anything put in its place could theoretically serve the same functions but will always be a fake and will never be the real thing. I won’t ever “get over” the fact that I don’t have a leg, but I’ll get used to the fact that it’s not there anymore. I’ll adapt and make it through life without the leg. 
Laura Gilbow

I grieve the fact that I don’t get to grieve my brother’s death in old age; I have to grieve it now, at age 21 and beyond.

It is for the little one I grieve – confused, with no way to understand a world beyond comprehension.   A world she walked alone.  No one would understand.  No one was curious enough see.  No one would be bothered with her silenced experience.   She knew better, knew in speaking she would be more alone than in bearing up.   She made it through.   All of the years.  She does not know how.  I do not know how.  I do not know why.   It is for the older one I grieve  – caught in a cycle of fix, heal, make up for, come through … somehow.  Finding choices made a half century later still governed by tracks laid down so long ago.  For so long her effort was spent fighting for life and then the deep knowing she fought against it with as much strength and less awareness.  Not knowing another way.  I grieve for the choices – from where they were born to the life they created and the confusion of waking to them.  I grieve for all who suffer in similar ways.  I grieve for all who suffer.  In the end, I simply grieve and feel life and welcome it with open arms.

i lived in the sonoran desert for one year only. i can remember when i first moved out there to that renegade land populated by saguaro cactus (l call them Cactus People) cocatillo and reptiles that looked older than god.  i thought, “oh my god, who knew it was so beautiful out here..that there really are purple mountains majesty-i this beautiful arizona desert- i never knew…i guess the me, that i found in that land…that reminded me of the truth of how big and small that i really am—a humility that found me in touch with a sacred sense of all that is.  And then, i left.  after only one year.  and i don’t know if i will ever get to go back—was it the land that i loved or the me that i found in the land..i don’t know.  but what i do know is that at every picture-painted or photographed that captures the beauty of the desert something in my heart grieves the memory of standing small and tall in the vastness of the desert.  i miss the desert.

My incredible grief turns on the loss of a sense of place. The small towns have dried up—no jobs, boarded-up storefronts, graffiti slashing across your high school’s windows.  The family old place is up for sale, but today’s families don’t want that old rambling ginger-breaded house where my father grew up.

People are part of place, too.  Nobody stays put anymore. Where once you had grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins by the dozen, now everyone you knew is in the little cemetery up the road.  Faded silk flowers and monuments with bird droppings mark their resting places.  Their houses stand empty and their children have moved away.  But every wrinkle they wore and every hug they gave me rest like feathers in my gunnysack of memories. I miss them all so much. 

Never a holiday comes—Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July—that my heart doesn’t break, remembering the times the family gathered.  Scents sear my hidden places.  I smell the roasting turkey, see the aunts in the kitchen making potato salad and baking cakes.  The men stand around the grill where the eldest uncle mops the chicken with his secret sauce on the Fourth.  Everybody laughs and talks at once, telling the old, old family stories that teach the children who their people were.

I yearn for the girl I was—my innocence, my pain, the fun we had.  My innocence was lost on Halloween 1959, when I was barely 15.  My idol, my beloved father, died of a heart attack.   To say I suffered trivializes my agony.  I couldn’t wait to grow up and move away.  Dylan Thomas wrote, “After the first death there is no other.” But, somehow, I thought the others would all stay there, that I could always go home again to that little town where I grew up— where they grew old and died.

Webb was flawed I know now, and we who grew up there had to find our own paths

 to a wider world.  But my love for that place runs deep and rich.  The safety and innocence

we shared still holds our roots though we took flight.

By J. Gail Livingston

I was lucky, I discovered. I grew up with three grandparents, and five great-grandparents still alive. I didn’t know that was unusual. When my children were born we had two lines of five generations living; by then I had an appreciation for what that meant!

My maternal grandparents were a huge part of my children’s lives - we visited them frequently. We have pictures of baby Shaun sitting in my grandfather’s lap, Grandpa’s huge workman’s hands firmly securing him, riding around on a tractor, just as he had done with me as a baby. We have a lovely picture of Kimi, up in a tree, casually talking with my grandmother, whose name became Kimi’s middle name and who also loved to climb trees, and do back bends, and race a sled down an ice-covered road when she was in her seventies. 

Then all of my grandparents died within a two year period. 

For Shaun, the loss of his beloved great-grandfather changed him profoundly. My little boy, fearless and adventuresome since he could walk, suddenly couldn’t stay overnight at his best friend’s house, something he had done many times before. He worried about bad people breaking into our house and either robbing us or setting the house on fire. He was scared and he was sad.

Kimi tried to hide her grief. At the wakes and funerals she chose not to go to the caskets. That would make it too real for her, seeing them when they could not possibly see her, smile at her, hug her. She kept an old dress that my grandmother used to own, one that she sometimes played dress up in, and a bunch of buttons that she used to count and sort with my grandmother. These weren’t “heirloom quality” items that would appreciate in value for strangers; they were more meaningful than that and thusly she grieved, quietly with her treasures and her memories.

Losing my grandparents was incredibly hard, and as time goes on I realize that I continue to grieve their absence from our lives now. Every milestone in our kids’ lives, our travels, our move to NC, I wish I could share. I grieve that Shaun can’t learn woodworking from Grandpa and that Kimi never canned jam with Grammy - so many lost opportunities. Yet I’m grateful that my kids remember their great-grandparents. For that’s how their love lives on.

Grief has its own journey. It takes the time its needs, I am only a captive, without control, as I grieve the loss of my Mother who went too young and too quickly.  It is a strange and silent journey as she told no one, only me, that she was dying and bound me to do the same, even after she passed. The silence of keeping her death is a heavy burden. One I gladly bear.

When you love someone deeply and they are dying you want two things. You and want to give them life. And you can’t. So you give them everything else while they are here and keep your promises to them. Is spite of what anyone else thinks or says or does.  

Given the choice all over again, I would still do the same. I would still hold her passing secret and alone be on the journey of grief.  In spite of how high the cost of honouring her wishes has been.  In some ways, too, keeping her death unspoken was a gift. The consequences for doing so reveal the true character of others when only after sixteen months they finally discovered her passing and wishes.  

Being released from the lives of those I was bound to by blood, was a gift from my Mother.   I suspect she didn’t realized how wise she was being when she made her request of me. 

Miss you Crazy, Love you True, Mu ♥

Heidi Hopkins

(I wish I could figure out how to upload a photo!)

He was only twenty-six and had the soul and wisdom of a much older man. He was my child of choice. I unofficially adopted him as my god-son and I was privileged to be his “Fort Worth mom” for three years.

During those three years, James taught me how to view the world through the eyes of a person who had already had close to twenty open-heart surgeries and still suffered from arrhythmia due to a plethora of congenital heart defects. James loved life, he loved everyone he ever met and they loved him. He was willing to try anything new at least once and was like a little boy in a toy store when he got a new computer game.

Through the internet and his “Furry” friends, James had friends literally around the world. He was given the chance to travel to various parts of the country and to England and he cherished every minute of every trip. For James there was no such thing as “wasted” time.

What he taught me was to love myself as I am, not to try to change for other people’s perception of who they think I should be. James was the most genuine person I ever met.

When he died in 2005, the world lost a great soul. He lives on within his friends, his family and his family of choice. But we all miss his huge laugh, his mile-wide smile, his steel-trap memory, and his great sense of humor and fun. The world is a quieter, more sedate place for those of us who knew him.

But his heart just couldn’t keep going and the surgery that was supposed to fix it one more time failed. He had an emergency heart transplant, but it was too late. And I didn’t get to say a proper good-bye. I hugged him the night before the surgery, but I didn’t say all the things on my heart and now I regret that.

I see him everywhere. A tall young man with a square jaw and strawberry blonde hair makes my head whip around every time. I miss him. My heart hurts to hug him one more time, to tell him how silly he is, to kiss his cheek and tell him his Fort Worth mom loves him. 

Webster’s 1913 Dictionary Definition of Grief:

1.            Pain of mind on account of something in the past; mental suffering arising from any cause, as misfortune, loss of friends, misconduct of one’s self or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness.

2.            Cause of sorrow or pain; that which afflicts or distresses; trial; grievance.

3.            Physical pain, or a cause of it; malady.

I do not recall ever learning about grief as a child.  It puzzles me that there was no discussion on how profound grief could be.  I felt utterly unprepared for it when I experienced true grief for myself at 34 years old.  I wondered if it were just me feelings these horrendously isolating feelings of despair.

The painful death of my dear friend to breast cancer was too much for my heart to take.  The wound that my grief created would manifest in such profound ways, almost swallowing me whole.  A cascade of life-changing losses would follow.  While I find myself healing, I must admit this process of grief is a journey, taking longer than I could have ever imagined.

I grieve for the loss of my dear friend, Terry.  I grieve for the loss of my good health as a result.  I grieve for the toll that took on my family.  I grieve for the loss of my career.  I grieve for the damage it did to my marriage.  I grieve for the pain it caused my children.  I grieve for the part of my soul that is gone.  But I am grateful for the enormous lessons learned.

Melissa Martin

The Obituary reads, “Carlisle, PA, Oct. 11, 1948-Funeral Services will be held tomorrow for 14 months old Joseph G. Larocca who drowned in a spring near the Carlisle barracks grounds.  He was the son of Lt. and Mrs. Eugene W LaRocca who said he slipped from their sight while they visited another Army family at the post. Rescuers tried for four hours to resuscitate the child.”

The child, my uncle; the parents, my grandparents. My grandfather had returned from the war a hero, highly decorated. They started a family right away, Joseph was their second son. My mother was in my grandmother’s womb when this tragedy happened. She wouldn’t utter a word until she was 3.

I grieve for the lost little boy who was treasured. My young, innocent grandparents whose happiness was stolen on that fall day. The horror is so easily felt in the last line; I can feel my grandmother’s despair still as she prayed to God for her son to be revived for four long, heart breaking hours. I grieve for my mother who was born just a few months later to a broken mother who was a shadow of herself.

They never spoke of it. I only know because of the obituary I found as a long grown adult and mother; and the pain I still feel in my bones, born through my grandmother and my mother to me.

What makes me still and silent on this day of bright celebration is what has happened to our country’s culture since 9/11. I remember before that day, our country was brash, and open and daring. After that day, fear dominated. We fear immigrants. We fear dark-skinned people. We fear non-Christians. We give up privacy and freedom in exchange for a false sense of protection. We separate the world into “them” and “us.” And “them” are wrong. News, which once was the inviolable ground of neutrality, is now a snipe fest of blame and blood. Common sense is hanging on by its thin fingernails, as we beg the question, believe in correlation instead of cause, and pay no attention to critical thinking because rage and hurled invective is so much more demonstrative of patriotism than calm and rational thinking.

Marketing departments, churches, and worst of all, politicians, manipulate us through fear. Vote this way and your way of life will disappear. Vote the other way and the terrorists win. You can’t trust the food you eat, you can’t trust imports. We are fed fear and hate by spoonfuls and articles, videos and ads, until we don’t know how to behave or whom to trust.

So today, I am carefully sweeping up the shards of my hope, digging in my backpack for leftovers of compassion, and digging out the last few grains of kindness. It may not be much, but I won’t trade them for the more colorful and dramatic fear. I won’t let fear stay in my house or in my heart. I want to be determined in good will, in optimism, in  helping those who need help. Eventually, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, and I want to live by kindness instead.

Morning

mourning loss

of that distant self

running back into darkness,

the eye of the heart,

those feet so light 

and elusive.

she visits me in glimpses

sometimes.

sometimes I think I remember

remembering her,

barefoot and summery

like Persephone before all hell

and winter, still she runs

from me. I am the mother

who has lost her child,

I am the split,

the division, the pit

where all things are divided

into opposites.

I am the site of all birth,

where the sun parts

from its dark waters.

Lisa Cottrell

I grieve not having had a mother. She died when I was 5 1/2 months old. I grieve no one trying to take her place. I grieve others not understanding what it is like to be motherless and have no safe place to run. I grieve that I lost my father to his grief and narcissism by the time I was 5, although he was alive for another 35. I grieve no one in my childhood, ever, and I mean ever, asking “How are you?”, “”How was school?”, or “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I grieve that it took me decades of therapy and meditation to feel safe enough in the world, and in myself, to let out and take in a full breath. I grieve that it was not safe for me to express emotions in my childhood even when I was scared, angry or in despair. I grieve that my father betrayed my huge unconditional love for him by scaring me and making me defend myself against his lust. I grieve that my grandmothers are all gone now, those women I enticed, when I was just a teen, to step beyond their fear and anger to open up and let me love them and them me. I grieve that my great uncle killed himself when I was in the third grade, though I understand, because he was in chronic pain. I grieve that he was the only one in my childhood to recognize I was me, Lisa, was the only one who saw me and who loved me unconditionally, just as I was. I grieve that it took me 30 years to recover from my first 20 years of life. I grieve that I am just now feeling brave and free, and supported enough to fully step up to my life. 

Lisa Cottrell

Today, July 4th, marks the 17th anniversary of the death of one of the best friends I ever had in my life, someone gentle and kind, who never hurt another person in her life. She was killed one month before her 21st birthday along with her unborn son.   This wonderful girl, Margo Glickman was best friends with myself and my niece LeAnn simultaneously.  The three of us were a force to be reckoned with and would wreak havoc on our small town most weekends.

Two weeks after Margo was killed, LeAnn’s step father killed himself, her mother went into a mental hospital and her sister went to prison.  I remember attending both funerals with her, both Margo’s and her step father Jim’s.  It was the worst summer either of us could remember but somehow we survived.  For a while.

My niece LeAnn committed suicide last September.  It was the third suicide in my family, after her step father and my half sister, her aunt, Kim.  Knowing first hand so much grief and loss, I still cannot believe she chose to damn the rest of us again to the pit of unending grief and despair and questioning she and I had lived with for so long.

So now I am the only one left, no one else remembers the jokes, the punchlines, the near criminal activity, the mayhem.  July 4th is the anniversary of Margo’s death, July 9th would have been her birthday, and July 27th would have been my niece’s birthday.  July is a most horrible month for me.

It is so strange and so lonely to be left on this earth with a heart full of memories of people who are no longer with us.

Larger, Faster, Shinier
by Ellen Tumavicus

I was in the bathroom stall at the Obama victory party
when my phone rang.
“Can you come with me tomorrow, El?”
That stomach ache she had been experiencing finally brought her to the local emergency room.
After an initial review of the symptoms,
an immediate appointment with the oncologist was highly recommended.
“It’s probably just an ulcer,”  I said.  “Too much stress.”

We entered the oncology suite.
Full of no-hair-no-hope people, lining up for their chemo.
Feeling kind of sorry for those folks,
we gave them loving smiles to brighten their day,
but inside thinking
How sad for them.
So grateful it is not us.

The doctor looked like a college student.  
She told us the news, no holds barred.
Cancer.
Ovarian cancer.
Stage IIIC.
Hysterectomy.
Peritoneal Scraping.
Chemotherapy.
Surgery next week.
No work for the rest of the academic year.
30% chance of living for 5 years.

With each fact, the reality of the situation grew more and more bleak.

Driving home, we went poured over the pamphlets and notes we had gathered.
We talked around and around about the news,
finding ourselves growing more and more frozen with shock.
“Wait,” I said, “there has got to be a silver lining to all this.
We always find it.”

We drove along, pondering the silver lining.
As we tootled down the highway in Connie’s white subaru,

A larger, faster, shinier

black hearse passed us,
with more confidence, strength and certainty
than we could ever muster.
A metaphor as subtle as a brick on the head.

We watched as it barrelled forward,
till it was out of sight.
Clearly it had won
before we had even really entered the race.

When I was seven years old, an elderly neighbor befriended me.  I was a very lonely child and often hungry for emotional and physical nourishment.  Over time, he began to invade my physical boundaries.  I did know what he did, what he said ‘we’ did, was wrong.  It was a huge secret.  

It was so huge a secret that I did not tell another person until I was 32. Experiencing postpartum depression, I gave my history to a counselor.  During severe insomnia, after 25 years, thoughts of the abuse surfaced and I obsessed about them.  

I found a very compassionate therapist and learned and believed that this man had stolen many pieces of my innocence.  And in their places, many ideas and thoughts were substituted.  

Ultimately, I felt as though I had never ‘given’ my virginity to anyone.  It was stolen from me, before I even knew I had it.  It felt as if I was never a virgin.

15 years ago, my husband had a brief affair…not surprisingly, it devastated me to my very core…at the time, our marriage was not perfect (whose is??) but it was good: our son was in college, our daughter was a senior in high school, I was looking forward to the time that my husband and I could spend more time together, take more trips, etc…without going into the reasons why I took him back and ‘forgave’ him, we forged on, and scooped up the pieces that were left of a 25 year marriage….I rarely think about it now, but what happened has irrevocably changed us, our marriage, our lives, our kids, etc…a betrayal like this that is so profound and hurtful remains in the heart and soul forever, I grieve for the marriage we had before the affair happened, when I still trusted, believed and loved with all my heart…. 

In the nearly two and a half decades of my life I only knew pieces of my father his life a puzzle with the last piece always just out of my grasp. The puzzle of my life only outlined and connected by the edges, the middle still a picture to be seen. For all the incomplete portions the theme still remained the same, he appeared in mere flashes and moments, time stolen by addiction throughout the years. Never to find a moment of his steady hand in my life other than the lessons taught that no PSA could burn into my memory. Until the day came when those days could be numbered. With a disease that time and medicine could not cure, came healing that only the time that comes like a gust of wind can provide. The understanding, forgiveness, and the love between a father and daughter that had long been overgrown by burrs and weeds. For still my life so incomplete and his becoming more final, we saw the puzzle completed for such a short time. I grieve the loss of the relationship we never had and the growth of the the one that blossomed in my adulthood, and relationship we will never have all the while remaining thankful for the time that allowed us the opportunity to heal the wounds and still have the dad I always knew was there.

Tiffany Craddock

Peach on Purple
by Ellen Tumavicus

I was perched on the highest rung
of the tall ladder leaning against my even taller house,
paint can, drippy brush, iced mocha, and cell phone
carefully placed in easily accessible positions.

We were painting our house that summer,
giving it a sorely needed lift-
scraping and covering the old dirty peeling paint
with a fresh coat of bright peachy orange with periwinkle trim.

I had Connie on my mind as
I brushed new life onto the tired old house.
With each peachy brush stroke,
I imagined the same new life we could paint on her disease,
fresh pretty colors would replace those horrific drab hues.
that dingy, peeling, hideously proliferous malignancy.

The cell phone broke into a jazzy tune,
jarring me out of my daydreaming plot
to end cancer with paint, brush, and color.
Balancing my tools delicately on the loops of my paint covered overalls,
I carefully picked up the phone.
She could hardly get the words out through her tears.
“I just got the new numbers, El, its bad.  
They have sky rocked.  What are we gonna do?”

The numbers.
The chilling indicators of the spread of her cancer.
It has come back in full force,
taking claim in a body where it has no right to be,
a body that still has so much to do and to love.

“I’ll be right over.”

She was in the passenger seat,
ready to take The Westy somewhere,
anywhere but where she was right then.

The Westy.
The dream van she purchased weeks ago.
A 1984 yellow Volkswagon camper, loaded with stove, refridgerator, miniature ice cube trays;
It even had an awning.
We had plans to paint turtles all over it.
(If I’m going out, it sure as hell won’t be in a white subaru, she said).

I climbed into the passenger seat next to her.
As we hugged, our knees collided, and
the peachy house paint from my overalls marred her pretty clean purple pants.

When we were younger, she hated how I took her clothes and inadvertently ended up wearing them out faster than she would have—leaving crumbs in the pockets, paint on the sleeves, or rips in the knees.  
She was so much more careful with her clothes than I was.

This day, she just smiled at the peachy paint spot.
A smile that momentarily softened the fear in her eyes.
Peach on purple.
A clash of colors,
a visual story of two bright lives made brighter by being together.
Basic color theory.

There wasn’t much more to say,
we knew even the Westy couldn’t help us to escape  the obvious,
the cancer had won, and it was on the warpath in her body.

A year later,
I sit here wearing Connie’s purple pants,
staring at the knee  embellished with the peachy paint stain.
I fumble through this elegy,
this lament to my beloved sister,
and the colorful splotches of joy
she spread throughout my life.

I grieve the reversal of a sign

From negative, to positive.

My nails fell off from infections, I grieved them.

My gums bled and receded from infections, I grieved them.

My body wasted, and I grieved for every pound I lost.

My future shrank to a few possible months

I grieved every lost day.

One vertical line

Become a wall,

Built of stigma.

Fear.

Blame.

And I grieve it.

My nails grew back.

My gums came back.

My muscles, and fat, have come back.

My future grew, though less certain than before.

But now I know that it all can leave because

I borrow this body from the virus that uses it.

I still grieve the reversal of a sign

From negative, to positive.

Having always felt much older than my years, I am looking over my life from what feels like its midpoint. (The veracity of this stance will require another 37 years to bear out. We could each go at any time.) And because I believe I’ve only ever made the decisions that felt right to me when I made them, it’s come as a shock to realize that I am in active mourning for certain lives I will now never live. Doors I’ve kicked shut along the way. Trails left cold.

Specifically: The warmth of a certain man, or of someone like him. The easy smiles, the passionate arguments, a hot summer sun always beneath the surface, for better or for worse. The mental lovemaking, greedy and wanting. The thirst not easily slaked. The travel. The frisson of normalcy, and of tradition and history, regardless of how we might have chosen to live out our life together. The blazing heat of someone like that.

I do not mourn the choice I made. And so I suppose this grieving is an act of selfishness; I sit here in my contentedness and mourn for still more. Or it is an act of wanton lunacy; I have so much, and it continues to multiply, and I am genuinely thrilled with my lot.

But oh God, knowing I’ll never have him or someone like him. It creates a keening in me, which becomes a howling, that I do not wish to hear.

My father died.

I was 13.

Forty Five years later…a bit lost.

Why?

No grieving.

“It’s over.”

“What’s over?”

“He’s gone.”

“Well…where did he go?”

Went to school the next day.

Idiot.

No funeral, no memorial.

No mention.

Lots of casseroles and

“Isn’t it a blessing?”

Oh, hell no.

Walked down the aisle with

Option Number Two.

Angry. Why weren’t you here?

Walked up the aisle with the man

Who is very much like him.

Happy again.

Children can cope.

Children need to know.

Children have brains

And feelings

And can feel more lost

If the decision is to “protect” them

By not being fully honest – and there

Talk. Argue. Scream. Anything.

Show you’re human and that you care

And that you hurt

And this it’s OK for them to do the same.

Otherwise

Lost

Angry

A little broken.

I grieve for my dad, who, at the age of 60, died of a cancer that took him in three months. I talked to him every two days when he was sick, and got to spend a lot of time with him the week before he died. I was there when he did. I feel blessed to have had that privilege. 

I wish I’d been able to ask him if it was ok that I didn’t have children. I grieve for that. I know how much it would have meant to him, and I wanted him to be proud of me.

I grieve for the time we lost because I thought he was a loser, because he didn’t make a lot of money and didn’t seem to want to spend a lot of time with us. I am grateful we were close for the 5 years before his death. 

My dad was always able to tell jokes without laughing, which made them even funnier, he always accepted me for who I am, and always made me feel like what I was doing was OK, as long as I was happy. He taught me that the little things are what matters. He was my rock. I miss my dad.

I grieve for my grand father, who I lost 3 months later. He had vascular dementia. He was always so much fun. I loved talking to him and spending time with him. And he gave the best hugs.

I grieve for my guinea pig Puff, who died 5 months after my grand father. He was almost 5 years old. I miss how he ran and popped to make me laugh when I was sad, how he always came to sniff my nose, how he sweeked for food. I still look for dandelion leaves for him 3 years later. Habit I guess.

Guinea pigs have clans. My dad, grand father, and Puff were part of mine.

Last by certainly not least, I grieve for my grand mother, who died a few months ago. She was crazy, and funny, and she is a big part of who I am today. It’s still hard to imagine that she’s gone. 

I am grateful that they are still part of my life, and feel lucky that for my first guinea pigs, Piper and Skweek, for my dad, and for Puff, I got to say goodbye. I am also grateful for Piper’s death teaching me that you should always tell people you love that you love them, that you should cherish them and appreciate them as much as you can. Life is short. I grieve for that.

For me it loss and change are nearly constant in my life and the atlas of experience is a good metaphor for all of it, since I am very geographically mobile.  I am currently struggling with a combined loss of a job that brought me a great deal of personal and professional satisfaction, and a place that I loved dearly.  It is a sacrifice that I know was necessary, but that doesn’t make it any easier.  The loss of both is more difficult in that I have to bear them alone.     

I grieve the loss of not just one mother, but two.  My mother passed away three years ago.  Cancer took her from me, but not before we had three years of ups and downs, chemo and not-really-remission-but-freedom-from-the-worst-symptoms.  

They were three of the best years of our relationship.  Suddenly, she was willing to travel in spite of the “no smoking” rules on the airplanes, in spite of the fact that her plants needed her.  She shopped (for me) even though she’d always hated shopping.  While she could still eat, she ate everything she wanted to.  She ripped up my garden and put a new one in.  Then she was gone.  And I miss her.  And I promised to always tell “Crazy Vera” stories about her.  And I do.

Lucky for me, I had an emergency back-up mom in my mother-in-law.  There are lots of terrible mother-in-law stories, but I don’t have a single one.  My mother-in-law was, in many ways, more a mom to me than my mother.  She “got” me.  We were so alike people assumed I was her daughter and her son was her son-in-law.  We liked that.  We even shared a birthday.

She helped get me through my grief over my mothers death and celebrated with me in the joy of the birth of my son, her first and only grandchild.  

Then she was torn away from me in a horrible, terrible, unexpected week.  A heart attack, a successful surgery, an infection, and then she was gone.  No time to prepare.  Such a cruel loss.

I grieve the loss of her maybe more than the loss of my own mother simply because I had no time to prepare and because it was so unfair to lose two mothers (and my father-in-law) in three years time.  And she “got” me.  And no one else really does.

A doctor told me I have an extra empathy gene. I’m not sure it was a medical opinion.

My empathy and my grief were born, in childhood, over hearing about deaths and injuries in war and other conflicts of the “good” people and those who are considered bad. My grief is always on the surface because I witness all who are hungry or homeless; those whose lives are made worse because of circumstances within and outside their control; for those who hurt and those who are hurt. Ignorance – willful ignorance– brings grief to my heart, head and soul. I grieve when cruel people die, believing that somewhere, at some time, they were loved by and loved someone.

I grieve for not hearing all there was to say and know from family members long gone and for history’s observers who didn’t have time to tell their stories. Grief stings my eyes and heart from the loss of friends and others dead from AIDS, those who took their own lives, those who cancer made vanish; for my friends who died in Viet Nam; for the children and grandchildren of friends who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. Grief overcomes me when people are murdered on the streets of our cities because I feel so helpless to stop it.

Abandonment of or cruelty to non-humans makes my stomach turn and my heart clench. Grief brings tears to my eyes and a lack of understanding.

Charlie Brown always said “Good grief” when he was frustrated. I am looking for “good” grief. Maybe it’s regular grief that makes us act more humanely after we witness and feel gut-wrenching loss after someone we love or admire is hurt or dies. Maybe “good grief” is like “eustress” and it causes us to be open to our emotions. Maybe grief is an emotion that makes us more who we are meant to be.

Sometimes I wish I could turn it off. Grief and loss hurt.

Two friends told me recently that I have to stop feeling so much empathy; I said my genes won’t let me and got out a hanky.

I can’t remember a time when my parents didn’t argue. I lived with my mom after they divorced in 1980. She didn’t adapt well and, at the age of 12, I often had to be the grownup of the house. My much-older brothers lived with us off and on, which never went well. More arguing. I married a girl just to get out of the house. An obvious mistake, accompanied by more arguing. I finally left everything and moved to Seattle to get away. My life really only began at 30.

Everyone in my family holds grudges, and I’m reminded of them often. One brother recently asked me why I never called him after I moved to North Carolina. Given that I moved here over seven years ago, I wish he could see that his question answers itself.

Now my mother lives with us, and all she ever wants to talk about is the childhood I hate remembering.

Both of my brothers are now divorced, each with a child that are the same age I was when my parents divorced. I hate knowing what those kids are going through, and will go through.

I purposely chose to never have children, because I’d never want my child to meet my family.

My girlfriend’s family often happily reminisces about the past. Family vacations, holidays. I ache with envy that I don’t have any happy family stories to share.

I have had my share of grief in my life…but one loss hits me hardest, and I didn’t even know the child.

An old friend posted on Facebook on Mother’s Day 2009, “My little one has a fever. It is so sad to watch your child sick on Mother’s Day when you don’t have a mother anymore.” Her mother had died six years prior. Little did she know that four days later she would turn off life support to her precious sweet 17 month old who was attacked by bacterial meningitis.

I grieve for my friend and her husband…she has since had another healthy child. But now she is fighting Hodgkin’s. Today she had a PET scan to find out of she was done with chemo - and her one year old took his first steps while she was having the scan to find out if she is cancer free.

I grieve for my friend as she has had to face far more in her 35 years than the rest of us ever have to.

I grieve gracefully for the beautiful lives within my own that I have lost. The nine year old girl with the weak heart, the 66 year old woman who inspired me to shoot for the stars and the 90 year old woman who was ready to move forward. 

I grieve sorrowfully for the childhood that I wasn’t given. The innocence that was taken too soon; the fun I had to miss out on throughout high school; the love that was never given. All I have now is what I can create myself and that is what has gotten me through.

Through my grief- though- I have found the light. Not a light that I have always been surrounded by, but the light that I have always held in the palms of my tiny hands. The flame that has been lit by the losses in life, and for that flame, I am eternally grateful for my grief.

I grieve my father each day of my living.  I grieve the security of having him in the world. He would do anything for me, no matter how uncomfortable it made him. He had a way of making me believe no matter what was going on in the world around me, it would all be okay. I grieve that feeling that only he could conjure up for me.

I grieve the magic emitted from his eyes when they lay up on his grandchildren. He knew their lives were his second chance. His chance to be to them what he regretted not being to me. I grieve witnessing that healing, for both of us. I was healed as he let go of those regrets and embraced the side of himself that loved me deeper then he knew was ever possible.

I grieve the family we were with him in it. We are shattered now. The anchor, lifted has left us a drift. Old traditions are empty new ones as uncomfortable as under sized pants. The rhythm is ever shifting as the ground beneath us creates a new landscape that were not as skilled at transversing. 

I grieve his hands. Rivers of work meandering through a lifetime of effort and exertion. Mirrors of his own mothers hands, that had slipped me scotch mints throughout my childhood. Shadowing what my own hands have the potential to become. 

I grieve or differences and how they fired up conversations for as many years as I can remember. Our volume escalating alongside or convictions. Only straying temporarily from our love for one another, often rounding back to our agree to disagree policy. It is true our volume and passion was also found in our acceptance of an ideal. Like an engine in neutral roaring every louder with each push of the gas. 

I grieve my daddy. The man my little girl heart first poured her adoration upon. The place I practiced being in love. Writing him love letters and tucking them in his suitcase. I grieve for her lost daddy. 

Mostly, I grieve that feeling I had before I knew this sort of heartbreak. The place where I had assumed he would always be alive. 

Four days before she died, I told her I was pregnant again. So now there is a young boy with her eyes running around my house. He never got to meet his grandmother, who, seven years on, is still talked about by her friends and loved, loved, loved by her husband. Sometimes I can convince myself that she still will answer when I call, so I don’t test that theory.

I grieve not for the man who committed the crimes, but for the innocence he took from the little girl.  I grieve for her loss of trust, her loss of feeling safe in the dark.  Replaced by fear of people, fear of the dark, and fear that she was not the best person she could be, because he played on her innocence and destroyed that, just to pleasure himself. 

I grieve for the young woman who tried to trust men, but did not understand why she couldn’t trust one hundred percent.  I grieve for the mother who had to warn her children to fear not only strangers, but also people they knew, in case they asked for more than they should, or worse, did not ask at all, but helped themselves. 

I grieve for the grandmother who looks back and sees that life could have been better, could have been more trusting and she could have had longer relationships with men.  She could have had a partner life, and not a single life.

Yes, I grieve for the little girl, but not the man, who thankfully, now resides in the ground.

She didn’t appear online as she did every morning before.  It was Valentine’s Day.  So I called… there was no response.  The “Mom’s not answering” chain of events was put in to place… I was too far away… and she was already gone.  Valentines from the Granddaughters had arrived in her mailbox the day before only to be left behind… like me.

In spite of showing no physical signs or symptoms, a blood test told me that I have genital herpes in October 2011. After the humiliating task of calling all my exes to discover the origin, I found out that I contracted the virus six years ago when I was engaged to a man who was unfaithful to me.

He was someone to whom I was ready to pledge the rest of my life… and in a way I have, because I will have this virus for the rest of my life. Every future relationship will begin with the difficult discussion about STI tests and our statuses. Every relationship will be entered into with extra caution from now on, with me always waiting and wondering if this new partner will leave me once I tell him my secret. It’s happened before, and it’s left me feeling unlovable.

This is not a life I thought I would have to lead. This is not the life I wanted. I want to be clean again. I want to be me… without grief.

Last month was the two-year anniversary of the death of my lover and friend from the ravages of cancer.  I loved this man with my whole heart and soul and was crushed when the doctor with a long face told us the chemo and radiation was ineffective.  My feelings were so deep I could not find the words to express my emptiness and my fears for my future without him by my side.  I felt guilty that I was thinking of myself when this wonderful man was lying there in so much pain dying.  Somehow I needed to get these emotions out.  To occupy myself while sitting with him during the many hours he was in the hospital I read dozens of magazines.   The magazine that saved my sanity was called Art Journaling.  With the help of an article in this magazine I found that I could express myself through images without the feelings of guilt.  (OK, yes I still felt guilty but I felt like the images were in code and only I knew their true meaning.)  Months after my lover’s death I took my art journals to the hospice organization that helped us and volunteered to teach others how to art journal to express their grief.  The office manager told me there are 5 stages of grieving and I had expressed each stage in my artwork.  I had no idea.  This was simply an outpouring of my pain.  I would be happy to share some of my art work but have been unable to transfer the images to this site.  If you are interested please contact me by e-mail and I’ll try to work it out.

I grieve my

ever evolving Life.

Its constant impermanence.

Too many goodbyes

leavings

love

buried

Too many

one by one

My sweet friends

my family

more than family.

Close enough

to see

the breath vanquished.

To fall in the dark

slipping

tripping

on impressions

left behind.

My friends

my family

buried

long gone

with me still.

They are why

I cannot

suffer

fools

or

vampires

or

cruelty.

Although it’s true

at times

I still

stop and observe.

J.D. Eames

Poems for Those Now Gone, 2011-2012

We went again to the Compassionate Friends meeting.

There was a woman there whose grief dominated nearly the entire meeting,

as if the rest of us were not also hurting.

“It’s just so sad,” my husband says.

 ”It will get easier,” the meeting leader man says.

I believe him.

But the woman whose grief dominated nearly the entire meeting,

as if the rest of us were not also hurting,
she does not yet believe him.

Sometimes you just have to believe.
Even when you don’t.
Believe.

I grieve for the childhood I missed. I grew up too much too quickly.

I grieve for the love I have lost, because times weren’t right and sometimes the strongest connections between two people just aren’t enough.

But I rejoice, in both of these things, for a chance to try again.

He lays in Plot 190 A-1 in the Garden of Eternal Life, the man in prearrangements explained and provided me with a map. His headstone is black granite with the words, “Beloved Husband and Father” etched into it in all caps and in a classic font.  A life summed up in only four words. It is a single headstone, not the double kind with the wife’s name engraved on the right side, just waiting for her to die.  I was glad I didn’t also have to see my mother’s name, the reminder that one day she too would die. After sixteen years, soft grass had grown over his plot, but today, was hidden by snow.  My tears made it difficult for me to read, but there I stood.  Plot 190 A-1.  It had been sixteen years since I stood in that spot, in my only dress, staring at the audience of my father’s friends and business acquaintances.  Short of breath, I dropped to my knees and let the snow seep through my jeans.  I laid down on the wet earth, resting my cheek on top of the snow, imagining my father’s rotting bones six feet below.  He was in a maple casket, his bones decaying inside his best suit.  I wondered what his body looked like, if the skin on his face had turned to leather, or if his bones protruded from his rotten flesh.  I wondered what stench filled the casket.  The smell of death, I imagined, the formaldehyde slowing fading away.  His body has been locked inside that casket for sixteen years.  Sixteen long years of being fatherless.  Sixteen years, six feet below the soft grass and cold snow. I sat up and punched the hard, winter ground.  He was supposed to teach me how to make asparagus soup the morning he died.

-Rebecca Johnson

The father no one even told me about until I was 40 years old which was several years after he died. Although I always ‘knew’ something wasn’t right because I didn’t look at all like my brother, sister or the man who was supposed to be my father, they held onto their well rehearsed stories until it was too late for me to look a the person whom I probably most resemble in the world. So I grieve the man I never knew and the loss of the family who kept the secret for all those years. I imagine how different our relationships would have been & how different I might be if I would have been let in on my own life.

I am a forty year old woman, I lost my children 15 years ago due to being bipolar. I did not even know of this illness at that time. I had highs and lows on a regular basis. I did things I will regret for the rest of my life, yet understand and accept my illness. I was pushed away and told to stay away that “he wants to start a new life with a new mom for them and stabalize them” I was told im not a real mother only a biological one. I have grieved for my babies,young girls,teens, now young lady for to long. How do you say sorry? When will this emptyness ever end?