Stages of Grief

I am very, very tired, after having gone to the funeral home with my friend and sat in the same little room that my husband and I sat in seventeen months ago . . .

I came home and said to The Lovely Daughter that I am pretty much not believing it these days. I just think he will come home.

"Total denial," she said. You know, those stages of grief don't happen in sequence."

"I know that," I said. "Denial seems like a high-functioning place though. I spend most of my time there. I'm not angry too often anymore, and I can tell when I'm in acceptance, because then I just cry, because I get it."

She nodded.

"I've pretty much given up on bargaining. It didn't seem to work," I said.

"Mom, that is SUCH a denial statement," she responded.

"You have to know you're in denial when you talk about bargaining not working as if it might have. Only a person in total denial could think that there is anything plausible about bargaining."

I love my daughter so much. A couple of nights ago we were watching something ~ I have no idea what ~ on tv and one of the characters vocalized a long litany of recent disasters in her life.

"Do you remember what it was like when a statement like that was just dialogue on a tv show?" she asked.

And While We're On The Subject of the Challenges of Loss . . ..

I know that I have a number of good friends and readers who roll their eyes in disbelief, skepticism, irritation, and incredulity whenever the faith stuff comes up ~ and most especially in the context of things like my son's death, and death and loss in general. (Not that there is ever an "in general." It's always so painfully personal.)

If you've read any of Desert Year, then you know that I don't have a sentimental or squishy approach to faith, that I was besieged by a profound sense of God's abandonment in the year-plus after Josh's death, and that I am much more comfortable with questions than with answers. I am going to write more about all of that soon, but not now! ~ as I am confronted by the need to stop all unnecessary activity for two weeks in an effort to salvage my ordination exams, to which ironically, confident answers are the expected response.

I don't, however, want to depart for my husband's family and father's funeral and then The Library, without linking to one of the best things I've read in a long time about faith and consolation. I may have written that in the days after my son's death, I overheard my father say "At least she has her faith to comfort her," and that I shook my head as I kept walking down the hall, thinking that he didn't have the foggiest notion of the challenge of the Christian faith. Much of Desert Year was an exploration of that challenge, although I was far too immersed in pain to see or write a way out.

Ryan Duns, S.J. is an exceptionally thoughtful and articulate young man. I might debate his conclusion a bit, and suggest that there are times when consolation is not about confidence, which has a way of evaporating, but about hope when you can see nothing ~ and about not even your own hope, but that of others, who remain present to you and open to God and hopeful for life again, all when you have moved into some other dimension in which none of those things seem possible. Nevertheless, the post is a wonderful expression of an aspect of Christian faith seldom acknowledged. (I sometimes think that Ryan is channeling my first Jesuit spiritual director, something I recognize because I do it myself on occasion.)

At any rate, enjoy the music in the previous two posts ~ but don't think that I'm under the impression that faith is an easy road, especially when we live on life's most brutal edges.

I may be back sooner than later so that I can bemoan the need to write yet another exegtical paper in Hebrew ~ or I may wait till it's all over.

Music This Week

from last Friday's funeral for the beloved fifteen -year-old girl:



and



and from tomorrow's funeral for her beloved grandfather, to be sung by The Lovely Daughter:



and my father-in-law's favorite:

Endings

Those of you who know me on FB know that my father-in-law died Saturday afternoon.

My husband and I spent most of Friday focused on the funeral mass for the young lady whom he had coached in soccer for five years.

She was a freshman at a Catholic girls' school, and half the sanctuary was filled with its students and alumnae. They all sang their alma mater so sweetly at the beginning of the service and
then began to cry at the end as Stand By Me (the last FB status of the young woman, who had collapsed at school a few days earlier) was piped into the sanctuary. The other half of the huge sanctuary was filled with people who have experienced the seemingly incessant stream of deaths of young people which has plagued their parish for the past three months. My spiritual director was one of the priests presiding, and we had a meeting scheduled for late that afternoon, which was perhaps a good thing for both of us. I don't know about him, but I went straight to bed afterward.

My husband's father has been quite ill, but there has been much optimism for for him during the last couple of weeks. However, on Saturday morning my sister-in-law called to say that things had suddenly gone downhill. We got there a couple of hours before he died, surrounded by most of his family, and spent yesterday on funeral planning. I am home now for a brief day of organizing and cleaning and then back to my in-laws' home for at least a couple of days.

As we talked over the funeral, some dear family friends mentioned how much they had liked some of what we did at Josh's. I don't know how it is for other people, but for us it's as if he died this morning, and so it seems like all of these losses are happening at once.

I know I have moaned mightily about the overuse of Psalm 23 (a complaint echoed, to my surprise, by my mother-in-law yesterday), but in my Catholic ventures this past year I have become very fond of the version above. I seem to like it particularly this morning.

Sadly Connected

Year before last when she was applying to high schools, one of the girls my husband had coached in soccer for several years wrote an essay about how much he had influenced and helped her as a player, and how sorry she had been to hear that he had lost a son. It was an unusually lovely and sensitive essay for such a young woman.

She died a couple of days ago -- a stunningly beautiful, loving, and talented 15-year-old. I still don't know what happened, but apparently it was very sudden.

I am beginning to think that it is the rare family that is NOT haunted by the death of a child.

Happiness?

It seems that among the things to which those of us in some considerable pain must resign ourselves are the well-intentioned efforts of (our?)(Job's?) friends to urge us to reconsider our potential for happiness. Last fall, in the wake of one such conversation (full post here), I concluded that:

<<to say that the point of life is "to be happy" renders our existence virtually pointless, while the alternative, "to know God," offers us dignity and significance. If all that is available to me in the face of the death of my child is "to choose happiness" ~ well, that seems to me to represent the epitome of triviality. However, if knowledge of God ~ which would also mean knowledge of love, knowledge of ways to remain present to those I care for, knowledge of my life having some purpose ~ remains a possibility, then there is a point to life. >>

Today, Tim Muldoon, a writer over at Ignatian Spirituality, offers the following:

<Finding Happiness, which is perfect for those of a resolution frame of mind. Written by a Benedictine abbot (of Worth Abbey, in Sussex), the book looks at the development of the philosophy of happiness in the West, from the Greeks into the monastic period of the Church, focusing on the Eight Thoughts (acedia, gluttony, lust, greed, anger, sadness, vanity, and pride) which get in the way of happiness. Remove the eight thoughts, he suggested, following the 4th century monk John Cassian, and you remove what makes you unhappy.

As a historical note, when Ignatius wrote the Spiritual Exercises he was using a tradition that was already long established in monastic history, so what Jamison has to say about happiness is very much in the same vein as what Ignatius was aiming for. The idea is common in the Church Fathers and Mothers, Aquinas and the scholastics, and Ignatius: remove sin so that God’s grace may work in your life. That’s happiness. (Not necessarily pleasure–they all followed Aristotle on this point, that pleasure is passing but happiness is a way of being at work in the world. Pleasure is fine, but it comes and goes.)>>

Perhaps my own (and my friend's) confused thought was merging happiness with pleasure. I am willing to hazard a guess that in talking about "knowledge of God" I was in the vicinity of Jamison's discussion of happiness, and that what perturbed me so much about my friend's insistence on happiness was my perception that she wanted me to find a way to have some fun.

I believe that I can say with some authority that mothers who have lost children to suicide are not thinking much about fun ~ but we are focused intently on meaning of life questions. And on questions such as whether our own lives will ever again be about anything beyond endurance.

And so: I am thinking I'll take a look at this book.

AFTER ordination exams.

(And for all who have followed our miserable vacation saga: we are home and have learned that, indeed, middle-ear mess-ups can produce total life havoc. It will be awhile before The Quiet Husband can return to work, as he can't really walk or drive, but he should be fine eventually. Many thanks for all the prayers and support.)

Good People Everywhere

The Quiet Husband is home and slept quietly (!) all night.

It is not so terrible to be not the sick one but the one going in and out of the hospital when it's surrounded by palm trees and the nurses' scrubs feature patterns of sunglasses and porpoises. The care was excellent, and laid-back in a good way.

We missed a spectacular New Year's Day in the Keys; every time I drove up and down the highway I could see dozens of kayaks and fishing boats out in the blue-green-purple water under the bright sunshine. This morning it's still beautiful, but quite chilly, and no one else is up yet, so I don't know whether we're going to start the drive home or not. I'm about to head out for my walk.

The really good thing: being surrounded by friends. Friends sending good wishes and prayers via blog and FB and email, friends at home dealing with our snow-covered house, and a friend in Philly praying in front of my favorite painting.

Thanks, everyone.

Really, I Thought That Maybe We Could Try Again

My husband got really, really sick and spent last night in the hospital here in Islamorada. This morning they tell me he is still too dizzy to stand. Last night there was some talk of sending him to Miami, so I have no idea yet where to plan for the rest of us to stay tonight.

The doctor won't be in for a couple of hours and I have a number of calls to make, which is why I'm still at the condo, waiting for a reasonable telephone hour. I am supposed to be packing up and flying home today and preaching on Sunday, none of which is going to happen. Others things are going to happen, but who knows what they will be.

I know; I did say that only a moron would try to predict five minutes ahead.

Shall we move on down to Have a New Year That You Can Stand?

Florida Memories

It's been nearly 24 years since we took our kids (just the two 18-month-old boys boys at that time) to St. Augustine Beach for the first of what would become two decades of annual visits. One day, on a morning just like this - clear and cool and sunny -- I discovered, as I was getting dressed, that Josh was awake in his crib, and asked if he wanted to go out for a walk with me. Of course he was enthusiastic, and so at probably about 7:00 am I carried him and one of the strollers down to the beach and pushed him along the water for a mile or two.

The ocean sparkled in the sunlight, and Josh was so blonde and so full of joy.

Long Week Ahead

Maybe I closed my Desert Year blog a week too soon . . .

Christmas services this morning and tonight at my field ed church, both with dramatic presentations by children . . .

Going to a UCC blue Christmas service tomorrow night with Musical Friend . . .

Two services at my field ed church Christmas Eve . . .

And then with, amazingly, Gregarious Son as company, a midnight service somewhere . . .

And then at 6:00 am on Christmas morning, a flight south.

I wish this week of the Incarnation were not so terribly, terribly difficult. I wish I lived in a remote monastery where it might be a week of solemnity and quiet joy.

Twenty-six years ago we learned right after Christmas that I was pregnant -- a month later, that there were two babies. I looked at the ultrasound pictures earlier this week. It is not hard at all to remember the exhilaration we felt, but it is hard to know now what it would someday lead to.

Two of my nieces have just learned that they are expecting babies in August.

Mixed feelings swirling around.

I Would Like To Take All The Credit

. . .but I think I get none.

I would still like to say for the record that I am in awe of the Lovely Daughter. Last night she emailed me a copy of her final final final draft of her personal statement for her social work school applications, and it's terrific.

I am astonished by her ability to stand back and look at her desires and experience and articulate her vision for her future.

I am also fascinated. When I was her age and in law school, I thought I was going to be a policy kind of person, out there working for social change and justice. By the time I had practiced law for a few years, I knew that I could barely work up the slightest interest in such an approach ~ I was much more interested in helping individual people solve their individual problems.

It's not a big surprise to me that, much as I love to teach and preach, it looks as if my real passions in ministry are going to be spiritual direction and chaplaincy. I am completely entranced by the quiet process of helping someone explore the ways in which God is moving in her life, and it's much easier to imagine myself sitting with a family in a out-of-the way hospital room in the middle of the night than moderating a Session meeting.

The Lovely Daughter is quite the opposite. She is working as an Americorps volunteer doing college counseling in inner city public schools and and says that, while she enjoys and derives great satisfaction from her encounters with individual students, her thought process is much more taken up by the institutions and processes that impede their progress. She imagines making her contribution in policy someday and, observing the knowledgeable confidence and self-assurance she has developed in the past few months, I can imagine it, too.

Her brother's death has forced her to grow up very quickly, and she has moved forward with compassion and grace. We are lucky to have her, and I think the world is, too.

Church and Girls and Their Moms

I was visiting another church, and at the end of the service a young-ish couple got up to make a stewardship presentation. They talked about how much the church means to them, and about how involved they are in the church and in its associated school which their three elementary-grade aged children attend. They were attractive and energetic and articulate, and bubbling over with the general goodness of life and their joy in their family and church.

It was pretty painful to watch, if you happened to be me.

I used to be that mother and my family used to be that family. It was hard to watch them as the person I am now. It was hard to think about myself having made similarly enthusiastic presentations in oblivion to their possible effects. It is hard to think about ministry and how to conduct church services in which the pews are filled with people experiencing all kinds of hardships as well as all kinds of joys.

After they stepped down, we sang the last hymn, and then it was time to leave. I was pretty near the front of the very large sanctuary and I wasn't in a hurry, so as I reached the back, few people were left. But among those who were still there was a small group in one pew: a young girl sobbing into the lap of the woman next to her, another girl about her age curled up in a man's embrace, and a couple of other adults looking fairly dazed and disconnected.

I felt as if I should understand the little scene playing out before me, but there was no reason that I would. And then I thought: I wonder if that's the family of the woman who died in a car accident a few weeks ago, leaving twin daughters behind.

If it was ~ how excruciating it must have been for those girls, to see another mother from their school laughing and talking about all the things that she does with her children. All the things their mother will never again do with them. To see their classmates smiling and waving at the congregation. It was hard for me and I am all grown up and I have had some time.

I wanted to stop and say, I know. I know what it's like to lose your mother in an automobile accident. I know what it's like to grow up without a mother. But of course, I didn't, because I didn't know anything at all about the family sitting there and, even if they were who I think they were, I am a complete stranger to them. But I do think about the family I know of, and pray for them often.

And then I drove home, and thought about a conversation my daughter and I had had earlier in the day, in which she had poured out some frustrations to me and had then begun to talk with delight about something else. And I thought about what it is like not to have those conversations with your mother. Not even to know such conversations exist until you have a daughter of your own.

I hope those girls have daughters someday.

I hope they get to wave good-bye as I did today, to a 22-year-old woman sporting a bright pink wig, off to meet a friend at her Montessori school's Halloween party, eight years after she last attended that party as a student. I hope they get to live as mothers the lives they are missing out on as daughters.

I hope they can someday find a way to be in church, filled with peace rather than with sorrow.

I hope I can, too.




Cross posted at Desert Year.

25th Birthday

Matt and Josh in St. Augustine
June 2004
(They were almost 20)

Qals and Piels and Hifils, Oh My!

I am sitting in my own living room with Gregarious Son and Lovely Daughter and Quiet Husband, totally vegging out while they watch TV.

For the past 50-some nights, I have not been able to relax for one second without thinking that I should be going through my Hebrew flashcards.

What a bizarre sensation it is, not to have to give a thought to a stack of flashcards or pile of charts or other unintelligible material.

Exam over. Retreat and then month off. Phew.

Employment

So . . . I think that Lovely Girl of mine has applied for about 50 jobs, last count, and ended up with the one she most wanted. She'll be spending a year with an Americorps project here in City on the Lake, working with high school students on The College Process -- helping them with finding colleges and scholarships, writing essays, interviewing, test prep, confidence building, etc.

Her own formal educational experience has been in environments much different from those into which she will venture in August; this should be an exceptionally good experience for her. From her own high school whose graduates without exception go to college to schools where higher education is barely on the radar screen ~ she will learn a great deal about how expectations and environment affect what we take for granted and what we don't. Her sociology honors thesis was on a related topic with similarly challenged students; this opportunity should meld well with the work she's begun.

She's probably reading this, so let me just add how proud I am -- I know that sending out dozens of applications and revving up for interviews that don't pan out and trudging from restaurant to retail shop in the constant hope that someone else will have just quit is NOT FUN. She mentioned the other day that she kind of wished she'd gone back to camp for one more counseling gig, but she knew that that would have only delayed the job search. Now she may be able to go back next summer for a session or two of the 75th anniversary celebration with a productive year behind her!

YES!

Exam and one term of Hebrew behind me, and The Lovely Daughter called last night to say she's been offered an Americorps job (!) that she was really interested in, and had given up on after hearing nothing since the phone interview six weeks ago.

More news when I know.

A long walk and a little mental break ahead today!

Middle of the Night Miscellaneous

~ One more quiz (tomorrow) and a final on Thursday and a full quarter of Hebrew will be behind me. I am SO grateful that one of my last summer CPE buddies who goes to a different seminary has shown up for this summer Hebrew here. We make an excellent study team.

~ The Lovely Daughter has a job interview tomorrow. Let's hope. As far as I can tell, approximately half of her friends are employed and half are not. Movement from the latter group into the former would be a good thing.

~ I have become addicted to The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which I can watch here but probably not at home. The tv switch from whatever to whatever has left us a one-tv family. No one seems interested enough in tv to do whatever needs to be done to change that situation. I suppose that if it interfered with my other addiction ~ early morning re-runs of The West Wing ~ I might drum up some motivation.

~ Michael Jackson's death has demonstrated to me that I am a complete moron when it comes to contemporary pop culture. What can I say? I think I just always thought that all his songs sound the same (which the Lovely Daughter says is true), so I never learned any of them. I was quite surprised when the Lovely Daughter filled me in on the Billie Jean lyrics. I did hear an interview on NPR to the effect that he was a dazzlingly innovative musician and performer. What do I know? Very little, apparently. Well, that's nothing new.

~ I can't think of a single interesting thing to convey. Silence is such a useful option sometimes!

Ten Things

1. The beginning of the third week, and I finally feel pretty much better after getting really, really sick in Oregon.

2. Going to spend the next three days plowing through my last paper (on which, thankfully, I had had the foresight to request an extension) so that I can maybe enjoy at least one long week-end (instead of the 10 days originally planned) before . . .

3. Summer Hebrew starts a week from today. Two quarters worth jammed into 8 weeks, and we all know how gifted (far from it) I am in ancient languages. Kiss this summer good-bye, until . . .

4. Two months from today I will be on an 8-day silent retreat, back at Guelph. I am torn between apprehension in memory of having been on retreat when Chicago Son died and a longing for the silence, the river, the sunrises, the labyrinth, the wide open spaces, the prayer, and ~ did I mention the silence?

5. Gregarious Son is taking the LSAT next week. Too late for law school this fall, which is a very good thing in a life ~ all our lives ~ which will be filled with tumultuous memories at the end of the summer, but who knows what it may lead to later?

6. The Lovely Daughter is at home and has begun her job search in earnest. It's beyond wonderful to have her around.

7. The yard is looking nice. All cleaned up and some flowers in ~ quite a change from last year, when I rushed from seminary to Chicago to CPE and then was too steadily exhausted from those overnight on-calls to think beyond the occasional lawn-mowing job.

8. The house is a disaster. I'm hoping that we will get the guest room re-plastered and painted this summer. So far it has taken about two months to pull down a couple of lengths of wallpaper and clean up the plaster dust, so the re-do plan might be a bit too ambitious. I have no idea how people like Quotidian Grace actually build an entire house.

9. Also ahead this summer: movement toward candidacy status in the ordination process. I have about finished the six essays (thanks to help from a RevGal!) and meet with my Session in two weeks, my CPM at the beginning of July, and the Presbytery at the end of July. All Presby-speak for The Process.

10. I think a great deal about a comment my friend Julia left over on Desert Year some time ago: about how sometimes things happen that you think you cannot possibly survive, and yet somehow you endure and move forward. Apparently that is the case, at least most of the time for most of us. I wish it were true for all of us but, for those of us who are left, there is increasing energy and laughter and ~ each other.

Just for Fun

As a former attorney for Chessie Railroads (another life, eons ago), I remain fascinated by trains, and the UPAC was in evidence throughout our travels. I really wanted a picture of a train winding through the Columbia River Gorge; this one enlarges more or less OK with a click.

The Bridge of the Gods is, as Gregarious Son says, a human erector-set-like version of what was, according to Native American legend, a "natural" bridge across the Gorge formed at one time by a logjam of debris at a turn in the Columbia. A mural -- too faded, alas, to photograph -- on the bridge foundation depicts its long history in its various forms. I took some photos for Chicago Son, who was fascinated by engineering and architecture, and would have loved to have photographed the bridge himself. We used it to cross to the State of Washington, so the grandparents could say that they have been there.

Over the River and Through the Woods

Well, ok, over the Grand Canyon and through the airports . . .

to graduation we go.

The Lovely Daughter graduates on Sunday. We leave for the great state of Oregon on Thursday, where we hope to see Lisa, the Columbia River Gorge, Cannon Beach, and ~ oh yeah, a few important events at Willamette University!

It will be tough, to make this trip that for four years I had looked forward to sharing as a family of five. But it will be wonderful, too, to help our beautiful girl celebrate friendships and achievements that began with that fateful hurricane four years ago.

Back in a week or so ~