Knock, Knock!

On the next to the last day that my dad was on this Earth, I promised him that I would take care of my mom and my grandmother and my siblings, and I told him that we were so thankful to have had him to pull all of us together as a family.  And then, as I knew I needed to say for him, after all he had done for me all of my life, I said to him, "You can go. But you have to come back to me!" Dad, who had lain still for more than a day except for the slow rise and fall of his chest from rhythmic breathing, started stirring in the bed, moving around and kicking the covers in an agitated fashion.  Instantly I realized that he had heard me, and I was ashamed of the selfishness behind what I knew he thought I was asking him to do.  "Oh, Dad," I cried. "I know your body can't do it anymore. I know you are doing everything you can to stay here with us, but it's ok if you can't. You've finished the race: you've done everything you needed to do, and we will be ok."  He immediately settled down again, and I just sat there beside him, quietly crying, biting my lip to keep from wailing because I knew if I did that he would hear and be upset by that too.  I wanted to tell him that what I'd meant was that I hoped he could try to send me a sign, after he'd gone on ahead, and that he could come and be with me and the rest of the family later, in spirit.  I didn't tell him that, though, because I didn't want to risk causing him any more distress, and so I told myself that he would do it anyway, without having been asked, if he could find a way.

There are so many times these days that I feel him right here with me, and my sisters and my mom feel the same thing at times, too.  Sometimes I feel his spirit when I look up into the sky and see big white clouds contrasted against a blue sky - or when I see a beautiful sunset or sunrise.  Sometimes it's when I see or hear or even smell something that reminds me of him in such a strong way that it's impossible to ignore or overlook.  And sometimes the thing that makes me feel a connection with my dad is seeing a redbird, something that often happens at times when I need comfort or encouragement or when I just need something to make me smile and think more positively.  

My sister Nancy was the one who first commented that she had been noticing a redbird around her house and in other locations on a frequent basis.  After she said that, I started thinking about it and realized that I'd seen one around more often that I usually did, too. Other people in the family began to comment that they had seen redbirds in certain locations at different times, and over time it has evolved as a symbol of comfort and positivity whenever any of us sees a redbird.  

I sometimes think that Dad's spirit takes turns spending time now with each person he loved and watched over while he was here in this world.  If one or more of us are on the road, I think he's probably traveling along with us; if one of us is having a particularly difficult day, he's likely there to comfort us, often in redbird form.  

Yesterday morning, not long after I'd gotten to work, I checked my email and saw one in my Inbox from my sister Nancy's friend Suzanne, who, along with her family, has been having to make some very difficult decisions and plans as her dad enters into hospice care.  In the email, which Suzanne had sent to me and both of my sisters, she told us about something that had happened that morning as she was getting ready for the day.  Suzanne knew my dad and has heard us talk about the significance that redbirds have to us, and she has given me permission to share her words and a that photo she took:

I was getting ready in my dad's bathroom for a meeting at the hospice home. I was thinking about you girls and what you went through and how tough this all is. When I hear one knock at the window.  I think it's something to do with the storm. 

Knock again.  So I look, and this determined cardinal is there.  Going back and forth on the window.  Making sure I see him.  He only delivers one knock at a time .... but they are forceful.

Notice me!  I run to get my iPad to get the photo and capture the moment.  He knocks while I run away.  I take the photo and return to getting ready.  KNOCK.  

I turn around and say out loud, "Yes, I see you. And I know everything will be ok."

He knocks one last time and then is gone.  

And I have chills and an unbelievable sense of peace at the road we are about to travel.//

~Suzanne

Here is the photo she took - the redbird is in the bottom right corner of the window, looking in at her.

The Flow of Grief

Today is the 5th of the month, and, as on this day every month over the last 25 months, that date results in an exacerbation of grief for me, because it is the day of the month that my dad went on ahead.  

I wonder if the 5th of the month ever won't be like this, if it will ever just flow by like the rest of the days on the calendar, and I wonder if it will hurt even more when the realization hits me that it has somehow slipped by unnoticed.  

From the moment I opened my eyes this morning, I felt the grief a little heavier, like a blanket that's too thick for the temperature in the room.  I plodded through the morning routine and made it out the door on time, but then, on my drive to work, I saw a car exactly like my dad's, an army green Mini-Cooper with a customized bike rack on the top.  

In an instant, tears filled my eyes.  I felt like I'd been punched in the gut but weirdly also a little bit comforted; feeling that it was a sign from my dad, I felt both like I'd gained something in experiencing that connection with him and like I'd suffered a loss again with the thought that the only contact I can ever have with him is transcendent. 

The unpredictability of grief is something that gets to me time and time again.  I like patterns and predictability; I don't like surprises or disorder.  All along I've felt like I wanted, or actually needed, to know - how will this go?  What's the plan?  How long will it last?  When will I feel like I have a grip on this grief, if ever?  

In the beginning, I told myself I could take it, if I only had an idea of how long it would go on.  And if I had some kind of rules or guidelines for getting through it.  When I realized there was none of that type of knowledge or information to be had, I found that pretty much all I could do was to cry.  We all cried, to each other and alone.  We worried about each other and we worried about ourselves; we wondered if this was how things would always be, and we wondered if we would survive the hardest thing that any of us had ever gone through.

So far I've just been muddling through it.  And the change - and the order to it and the flow of it - that I've started to notice, one that has come about at some imperceptible point in time, is that I have started to be able to reflect on the road I had traveled, to see some ribbon of road behind me as I glance in the rearview mirror, even as I have continued to trek along the same route, and I have started to see some differences in myself and in my grief ... not "progress," really, but observations about the path I have traveled as part of this process. 

Maybe it's just familiarity with grief, almost a relaxed intimacy like a couple who has been together for awhile or like shoes that are worn in but not worn out.  Certainly part of it is a realization that there is no standard of excellence in this process, just getting through it, hopefully intact. 

                           "I pick up a stone that I cast to the sky, hoping for some kind of sign."

I can smile most of the time these days when I see a photo of my dad, and I can usually talk about him without the extreme sadness and devastation that used to bubble right up to the surface so quickly.  I can laugh at some of the inside jokes that he and I shared, even though I realize that I'm the only one left on the inside of those now; I can usually think about something that he should be here to experience or to participate in now and not fall apart.  I can go to sleep most nights without feeling like I need to beg into the dark for a good dream about him.  Much of the difficulty is still there, though; I think I've just gotten more adept at managing it.  

I used to be a lot more inflexible - maybe even close-minded or harsh - in my views about certain things before my dad got sick.  I must admit: I did the same thing about certain things before I had children of my own; I thought I had at least some of the answers, and then reality hit me and I realized that I didn't.  I spent a lot more time with the "my way or the highway" type of thinking going on in my head than I do now.  

There's a certain amount of perspective that growing up  gives to a person - some of it good, some maybe more realistic than good, but nonetheless having our views changed over time is just part of life.  It's almost kind of metaphysical the way perception can be divided up over the course of a lifetime: either you think you know, or you know you don't know. 

But then comes grief, and that's a game changer on an entirely different level.  I think for most people, grief softens the edges of what we worry about, of our priorities, and maybe even of our philosophy about things.  For me, going through the trial of my dad's illness and living with the grief that has come from his death has also blurred lots of things.  I'm less sure about certain things - many of which I have written about and will continue to write about - and that can be stressful, confusing, and exhausting.  But one thing that I think has actually been a change for the better in this process is the mitigation of my tendency to cast judgment on others in general; not only have my views on some things softened, but I guess so have I.  

Here's what I know for sure about grief: there is no "right way" to get through it.  Each person brings a different set of circumstances, different coping skills, and different needs to the situation.  We may share some of the same emotions and sometimes even thought patterns as we travel down the road, but, as we are all unique individuals, so is the exact nature of our mourning and our grief.

In the weeks and months after my dad went on ahead, my first instinct was to isolate myself.  I'm not sure why, exactly; there are probably a whole host of reasons that went into that propensity.

With the encouragement of my family, though, I tried to get out and do things socially, although, truth be told, I didn't really feel like leaving the house most of the time. 

Through phone calls and sporadic visits between the different places where we lived, my siblings and my mom and I all stuck together as much as we could, but at the same time we all did different things to keep ourselves together in the midst of the grief, to ward off the grief, to get through the days that were so much tougher to get through than I'd imagined.  Wait a minute, scratch that:  I actually never even took the time to imagine what life would be like without Dad, until we were without him.  I guess that, like Dad used to say about worrying being a waste of time, I felt that punching through the unbelieveability to picture the sadness, the absurdity of that life, even when he was so sick, was just too far out there to be a reasonable use of time for me - it would be like me thinking about jumping on the space shuttle and going to the moon right now.   

I recently looked back at something I wrote very early in my grief, a jotted-down Q and A with myself. I wrote, "How can I get through this, how can I go on, what can I do?  I will probably end up sleeping too much, drinking too much, not eating enough, walking around in a stony silence, and I hate all of those ideas."  For better or for worse, I actually missed the mark on all of those things.  A lot of time at work and around town, I felt like a fraud, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, as if I were the same. I felt lost, but I knew where I was and I knew I didn't want to accept it.  I didn't know where to even begin trying to figure out how to live without my dad or how to live with the sorrow. 

In the immediate aftermath, my mother, of course, was the one still at the house where Dad was supposed to be with her, with the most dramatic life change, and she was the one that we worried about the most.  Her form of coping initially seemed to come in the form of trying to re-organize her house; it was as if she was trying to gain some of the control that had been lost the moment we heard Dad's diagnosis.  In my corner of the world, I made a list of the things that angered me, in an effort to keep from exploding in my fury, and of questions to which I knew there were no answers.  I tried different things, many of which I've written about since.  One of these was my longtime balance: running, which failed me in that role; for the first time ever, running didn't feel right to me.  It wasn't physically therapeutic and it wasn't emotionally therapeutic; it felt more like I was trying to chase down the answers to an interminable stream of runaway questions.  It hurt, something I was used to and was well experienced in in the physical sense, but the pangs of emotions that flooded my mind and my body on these runs were difficult to bear. After awhile, I gave up on it, and only recently have I begun to try it again, intermittently, as it seems like the flow of the grief and the things that come along with it allow.

Changes

Since the moment my dad went on ahead, I've noticed a pattern of paradoxes that has emerged: as he took his last breath, I was simultaneously glad he wasn't suffering anymore but so sad for so many other reasons. I was grateful to have had him in my life for as long as I did, but I felt (and still feel) angry, resentful, and desolate about the fact that I didn't have more time with him.  And after spending time helping to care for him around the clock during the ten weeks he was sick, with his passing I suddenly felt restless and fidgety - but at the same time I felt wearier than I had ever felt in my life, with the dull ache of grief settling into my bones from the first day I had to spend without him.  

Over the course of the past 22 months since my dad died, I've gotten better at some things and worse at others. The dichotomies of these changes in me have been very unexpected, unfamiliar, and sometimes even unexplainable; all of them, however, came as a result of the impact of loss and have caused me to have to reorganize my thinking and my patterns of actions in many ways.

When my dad got sick and throughout the duration of his illness, I felt like I had been forced to take off my rose-colored glasses; from that point on, I couldn't avoid thinking that Karma was essentially bullshit and that there's no such thing as justice.  That was nothing, though, compared to the thoughts that came after his death; at that point, those same glasses were shattered, in pieces, smashed on the ground.  I know now that there's not much - if any - control to be had over bad things happening to anyone, including me, at any time.  I guess I always thought that real insurance (and assurance) came from the kind of cause-and-effect relationship that I believed in before my dad got sick: if you live a good life, both in terms of being kind and giving and in taking good care of yourself, then you will live for a long time.  How can one NOT see the logic behind that?  But, as I came to see, that is absolutely not true.  

The realization of such randomness has effected two contrasting feelings in me - a sense of fearlessness, because, really, carefulness doesn't matter, and also a sense of terror, because, really, carefulness doesn't matter.  I don't know if that even makes sense - but I do know that the fluctuation between those two things can be exhausting and confusing, and I haven't yet been able to figure out how to reason away either of them.  I can see myself walking on a tightrope suspended high over the ground - and I can picture myself cowering in the corner.  Both with blaring vulnerability, and not at all the way I want to be.

Since my dad's diagnosis, I've done a lot of reading about cancer.  Every time I read something or hear something about risk factors and early warning signs, I feel a knot in my gut.  I want to yell a warning of my own to people who may also be reading the same information: Nothing is for sure.  No one is safe.  You can try to live clean, you can do all the right things, you can deprive yourself, you can avoid risks, you can live on a deserted island with no radiation, no cell phones, no microwaves, and you can eat whatever kind of diet you think is best, but YOU ARE STILL NOT SAFE.  And so there is the anger - and the fear that fuels it.  For like C.S. Lewis wrote, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear." 

And it does; it really does.  Fear brings out so many things that I just don't believe were present in me before this tragedy - fear that there is something lurking, fear that I have no control over anything, fear that I am messing something up along the way that cannot be taken back, fear that time may be limited for me or for someone else I love, fear that I may go off into the deep end, fear that I am too indentured in grief and loss to do what I am supposed to be doing, physically and philosophically.    

One thing that continues to shock me about grief is how draining it is, both physically and emotionally, even this far out.  It's such an assault to the system on so many levels.  But, with as tired as I feel most of the time now, here's another irony: I often can't sleep.  Many nights a memory involving my dad plays over and over in my mind.  Sometimes that thought is a happy one; other times it isn't.  Regardless, though, and even when I'm not thinking about him, the insomnia seems to have set up camp on a permanent basis, further adding to my weariness.  That tiredness affects my health, as expected, and also, I'm sure, my attention span and my short-term memory, which haven't been at their best either for quite some time. 

The way things are now, I have to work to see the magic in things much of the time.  It's still there; at least I am aware of that - it's just that I have to remind myself of it, and I know I am at risk for not seeing it as I used to do so easily.

Sometimes all I want to do is to be by myself, to regroup or to cry or at times just to keep from spreading my sadness any more than I have to.  At other times, though, I can hardly stand to be alone; I recognize that I need to be around people, especially those who care about me and - even better - those who know what's going on with me and those who try to understand.  

I am, I think, much better at being supportive to others in difficult situations and more empathetic or, in some cases, sympathetic towards others these days.  Don't get me wrong: I cared when I heard about people going through hard times before my dad got sick; I just didn't GET IT on the level that I do now.  I now realize that it's a blessing to me to be in a position to help someone else who needs support, and I think I'm more in tune with what to say or do in certain situations because of my own experiences over the past couple of years. 

At the same time,though,  I am less tolerant of what I have come to see as drivel and drama.  I have a hard time nodding in complacent agreement when I hear someone say they just had the worst day of their lives – really?  Did you hear that someone you love has a death sentence coming down the pipe?  Did you watch a loved one die?  Did you bury a family member today?  Then your day wasn’t all that bad.  OR – when people say “I almost died!” when they’re talking in superlatives like “I was so shocked” or “It was so hot” – really?  From listening to complaining to watching someone make a big deal out of what is essentially nothing, I guess I am just more intolerant of certain things these days, which admittedly isn't fair of me, considering I certainly need more than my fair share of tolerance and understanding from those around me much of the time.  

I read several blogs written by fellow grievers, each with their own set of circumstances, story, and timeline, and each with lessons for me along the way. One thing I am more aware of now is that constant talk about sadness and anger and unfairness aren't necessarily the most pleasant to read, and more to the point aren't the most productive.  I think we as a society see something that is broken, and we try to fix it; when we are sick, we do what it takes to get well.  And I think as such our tendency is to want to hurry up and heal or to get over our grief as quickly as we can, but I'm not sure that's the right thing to do.  Most people who are actively grieving seem to be doing it in private for the most part, and maybe that's not the right idea either. 

And so then there's the guilt, and the shame, and the secrecy of the sadness of it all, which is a point of sadness within itself.  I realize this may seem a bit sensationalized, or repetitive, or self-centered, as if I think I am the only person who has ever suffered a loss.  I don't mean for it to be like that - I guess I am just searching for some kind of answers, and, oddly I know, I also realize that those answers really don't exist.  There is no pattern to grief; there is no to-do list that will ease the pain of the loss.  It truly is what it is, because, as Dad would say, what else would it be?

Some of the changes I think are positive though ... I am much more observant of the Silver Linings in my life; I don't go a day without recognizing how lucky I am, even on my worst days of grieving.

I take more pictures.

I appreciate the positive in my life - and the people, even more than I did before.

I write more - because it helps me to sort out my feelings, and because one of the things that hurts the most about having lost my dad is realizing that some of his stories are gone, too, and I want to try to save as many of those as I can.

Symbols and Signs

Recently I went to visit my dad’s grave for the first time since his funeral.  I’ve actually never visited anyone's grave before, except to stand beside it as we laid to rest the remains of another family member.


I’ve heard some people say that it can be peaceful or healing to visit the grave of a loved one.  Because it’s the location on this Earth where the last bits of cells of that person are, it seems logical that one would be likely to feel some kind of connection there. 


My dad's body - or his ashes, rather - is buried next to the plots of my maternal grandparents.  The cemetery is a beautiful place in the country, with big trees and rolling hills.  Their headstones are very nice, and they have colorful silk flowers in the grave marker vases. 


I vaguely remember meeting with the guy from the funeral home (Mortician? Undertaker? Funeral director? Salesman?) with my mom and my sisters the day after Dad died and being asked what inscription or symbol we wanted on the front of the Dad's tombstone.  “How about ‘What the hell just happened?’ ‘Hell, no, this isn’t happening!’ or ‘Cancer sucks!’?” I remember thinking at the time.  I was holding on so tightly to the conviction that the night before - and, actually, the entire 75 days before - had all been just a really bad dream, one from which I would awaken and be shaken by but then go on with my Real Life.


Many of the big decisions about the burial had already been made:  Dad and Mom had made most of their own “arrangements” (what a freaky term) years in advance, and Dad had said for as long as I can remember that he definitely wanted to be cremated when he died.  The three things we had to decide on that terrible day were about the urn, what would go on the tombstone, and what would be written in the obituary. 


For the urn we chose a basic wooden box; we thought that Dad would think the vase-type urns were too “girly,” too fancy for his taste, or - as he sometimes termed things - "a waste."  We convinced the funeral home guy to let us use his computer and then we somehow found a way to type up the obituary for the newspaper.  Once that was done, the decision of the grave marker was all we had left to do there, and, for some reason, it seemed like the most important of the three to me. 

We flipped through the “Marker Manual” and, in much the way Dad picked out many of the things he bought for as far back as I can remember, we were able to make the decision because we knew what we wanted when we saw it:  a winged foot, which is the symbol of Mercury, the messenger, the Greek god of trade, and a commonly used logo for the sports of track and field and cross-country running. 




The day I went back to the cemetery, I stood for a while in front of my dad’s grave and waited.  I looked around in search of some kind of Sign.  I found myself thinking, “Come on, Dad!  Give me something!”  Finally, I sat down on the grass in between the plots of my dad and my grandparents and decided I would try to just breathe, just take in the scenery, just sit there and pay my respects to them.  A little voice in my head kept butting in and saying, “This is crazy!  Dad’s not dead!” but I kept at it anyway.


After about 10 minutes, I decided it was a little crazy for me to be sitting there waiting for something; while the cemetery is a pretty piece of property, it certainly isn’t where I spent any time with my dad or my grandparents, and I didn’t feel any special pull or connection to them there.  As I stood up to leave, I felt tears forming in my eyes and then spilling over to fall down my cheeks. I looked around one more time and then started walking towards my car, feeling lost and alone and so, so sad.  I don't think the cemetery is a place of peace for me right now; I don't think anywhere really is.