To my fellow survivors: How have you been? Please forgive the long silence on this blog. I could say I’ve been busy but that’s no excuse for being out of touch. In the past few months, I’ve been consumed first with sciatica pain, then with leading a sponsorship group for an Afghan refugee family. Both these things left me little energy for reaching out to others, much less for reflection. Now I’m ready, I hope, to reconnect.
The star jasmine on our back fence is in bloom again with its sweet, enticing fragrance. In two weeks, our son Noah will have been gone nine years. As my physical pain has ebbed, my February/March sadness has come creeping in. Not in its usual way of weeks of dread in anticipation of his death anniversary and anguish at re-living his final stage of life, but in small spells of tears. Like when my niece turned 25 the other day and I thought of how Noah adored her and how unfathomable it is that he wasn’t here to celebrate her milestone birthday–or his own.
How can my precious child live only in the past? At
least in the first months and years after Noah’s suicide, his spirit reverberated
in the present; his face, his smell, his friends, his opinions and conversation
still enveloped me. Everything—birds, rainbows, beaches—felt like messengers of
his enduring presence. I miss the intimacy of that early phase of grief, how I
could hold him close, how my heart was wide open with love and hurt. Even my
sense of guilt and echo chamber of “what-if’s” kept us connected.
Over time, Noah is more memory than presence. This
makes me feel furious, bereft, confused. What can I do with a memory? How do I
love and mother it? How do I ask it everything I yearn to know about Noah’s
struggle and his dreams? Some force like a tide keeps pulling him away from me with
ever fewer remnants left on shore.
The sad truth is that Noah takes up less and less space
in my mind and my life. In one way, this is natural and healthy; life goes on
without him in it, without my being engulfed by grief. But the press of
other things can crowd him out for weeks, even months, and I feel terrible
about that. It feels like a betrayal of Noah and of the loss that defined my
life in the early years.
I’m learning that if I want to be in touch with my grief
and memories of Noah, I have to open up space, let the heart slow and soften,
put myself in certain places or with certain people. Like standing arm-in-arm
with my cousin in front of Noah’s little shrine last Thanksgiving and her
saying, “Sweet Noah, we love you and miss you so much”—how it touched me to
hear someone else call out to his spirit.
I first learned to pray in 2012 when Noah was
suffering with severe depression. I was taught a blessing practice with lines
like, “May you be blessed with peace, may you be blessed with compassion, may
you be blessed with love.” I recited it like a mantra, first for Noah, then after
his death for my family. Today during a guided meditation, I was startled at
the thought of Noah himself as a “vessel of blessing” who might heap wishes on the
family that mourns him. Who might, in his own irreverent voice, call on us to
find peace, ease, and joy, however we can.
To my fellow survivors: What
do you do with the memory of your lost one? How do you keep it alive? What
blessings do you think that person would wish for you now? You may want to check out this advice about continuing bonds with a loved one from Alliance of Hope and this additional advice from What's Your Grief.
Susan,
ReplyDeleteyour ability to put into words what so many of us are feeling is extraordinary.
It has been a year and a half since Ben left us.
I tend to give seconds to the scene I saw that day- same as yours. I give it seconds and then swiftly send it away. I feel that it helps me deal with the reality, so that later in life I may not have symptoms of PTSD ( just being cautious).
My husband is unable to have the ashes removed from our house.
I tend to avoid this space because Ben is in every cell of my body- not the box. In time, a beautiful place will be found or the breeze will lift him up.
For now, when I see deer walking through the yard I feel Ben and I watching them- this is good for me.
When I am with my other son, my heart struggles for his loss and there is silence- he aches but holds it in.
There was wren last year that nested in our bird house. I imagine this wren as a gift to me and looked forward to its chirpings. I am anxiously awaiting its appearance this Spring
and reaching out to Ben to show him the simple beauty and joys that he could not hold on to. I thank GOD for the nature that surrounds me. It reminds me that life goes on and I will too- along with this deep scar that needs to be touched.
Hi Cynthia, I'm so very sorry for the loss of your Ben. Thank you for reminding us of the healing balm we can receive from nature when we are grieving, as when the deer or wren appeared in your life. I'm glad you can be in touch with gratitude at this difficult time. Wishing you a restorative spring.
DeleteIn shared sorrow, Susan
Dear Susan.
ReplyDeleteOur sad March appointment has come, bringing your son's Noah anniversary and my David's birthday (he would be 24). This winter has been a very cold one, with snow blizzards and really low temperatures, a rather rare phenomenon in central Greece and especially our coastal town. I go to the cemetary (κοιμητήριο= the sleeping place) and light my son's candle every Saturday evening, after vespers. I have planted an exquisit plant there (solanum), that has grown in these almost 4 years to be glorious, casting its beautiful refreshing shadow during summer, blooming, full of purple, ephemeral cones, thousands of them. By the end of February it was completely dead-like, whithered. I mourned for his plant, its roots going down to his remains and extracting life from them. Yesterday I went there again and, to my delight, from the seemingly dead-dry branches, many tiny sprouts had appeared. Tearful, grateful, beaming, I left κοιμητήριο.
I couldn't agree more with Cynthia about your awsome ability to put in words our shared feelings. I too, sometimes, feel this longing for the first intense phase of grief, its clarity, its awarenes, its proximity to my boy: "I miss the intimacy of that early phase of grief, how I could hold him close, how my heart was wide open with love and hurt. Even my sense of guilt and echo chamber of “what-if’s” kept us connected."
May God give you and all of us his unique and incomparable consolation and turn our mourning to joy, rip off our gloomy gowns and surround us with his grace.
As king David sings:
Eστρεψας τον κοπετόν μου εις χαράν εμοί, διέρρηξας τον σάκκον μου και περιέζωσάς με ευφροσύνην, όπως αν ψάλη σοι η δόξα μου και ου μη κατανυγώ. Κύριε ο Θεός μου, εις τον αιώνα εξομολογήσομαί σοι.
My love to all of you, pray for me,
Vassiliki
Thank you Susan for your words of wisdom and hope. I’m sorry you’ve suffered sciatic pain and I hope it can be managed and relieved. It is approaching two years since Gareth passed and I still haven’t really assimilated it or can comprehend it. It takes less effort to be just ok and of course the acute pain is no longer constant but as you say that had the sense of his closeness and love. We can only try to live life doing good that we can and show self compassion. With love Roslyn
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your words and perspective as they echo so much of what I think and feel. Please know how much your blog helps people like me to on our grief journey. I am still in the early stages; we lost our then 24-year old son Kyle to suicide in December of 2020. It helps so much to hear from others who have experienced this loss for longer and who can share their learnings. Thank you all.
ReplyDelete