Imagine this: a cherished ceramic vase, shattered into a hundred pieces. Grief hangs heavy in the air, mirroring jagged shards scattered across the floor. However, instead of discarding the wreckage, you choose Kintsugi – the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold. Using careful hands and a patient heart, you join the pieces, each gilded seam tracing the story of the vase’s fall and rebirth.
I mentioned the art form in last week’s blog. Kintsugi, meaning “golden joinery,” is more than just a repair technique; it’s a philosophy. It celebrates the idea that brokenness is not an ending, but rather a new beginning, infused with unity and strength. In the same vein that I wrote about last week, what if we applied this philosophy to our own lives, especially when they feel tragically broken and faith seems like a distant dream? Especially when we believe our brokenness defines us.
How do we apply kintsugi in our own lives? The first step is to stop pretending the cracks don’t exist. Ignoring them only prolongs the suffering. Let the tears flow, let the anger roar until it dissipates. Then, with courage, reach into the depths of your pain, your vulnerabilities, your struggles. Only then, through this act of bravery of facing what hurts the most, can the healing begin.
The next phase of the process is to embrace the imperfections. I get tripped up in the fact that our society often glorifies the “perfect,” airbrushed version of life. But Kintsugi reminds us that beauty lies in the authentic, in the unique imperfections that make us who we are. Embrace your scars, your stumbles, your quirks. They are the gold that makes your story shine.
From that vantage point, it’s easier to lift your head high and seek out the light. Do you not see it? I remember over 39 years ago, I could not see beyond the darkness, and the world around me seemed equally eclipsed. As fate would have it, my journey of crafting my own kintsugi began when I panned in the rubbish. It wasn’t the fear of judgmental stares that fueled my courage, but rather a community of open hearts, unjudging ears and warm embraces. People who saw my worth, not my cracks. Slowly, like moss finding purchase on a weathered rock, self-compassion aided me to recognize the shimmering parts of my life’s inventory, like gold dust on the wind. Accepting my fractures became the catalyst for healing. I gained a new set of eyes to see myself not as a broken vase, discarded and forgotten, but a work of art in progress.
My kintsugi journey is far from over, and, I’m guessing, neither is yours. As the new year unfolds, let us walk this path together and continue to share stories, tips and resources. Let’s kintsugi together, one shimmering piece at a time.
As the clock flickers towards midnight, a familiar ritual unfolds. Champagne bubbles, confetti dances, and resolutions whisper into the starlit sky. This time, however, as the year draws to a close, let’s rewrite the script. Forget the forced resolutions, toss the tired expectations. Instead, let’s ignite a revolution within, breaking free from self-doubt and crafting a haven of self-acceptance.
And this revolution has already begun for me. It lives in the wise gifts you’ve shared: your words and kindness like vibrant brushstrokes painting light onto the canvas of my being. From your help, I’m learning to embrace vulnerability, letting my empathy shine like constellations while dancing to the rhythm of my own unfamiliar steps, waltzing with joy, tangoing with grief, and pirouetting through loss across the canvas of life.
Because of the many gifts you’ve given me, I raise my glass to you, my blogging community friends. May your untamed fires illuminate the path ahead, and may your brushstrokes of faith paint your personal masterpiece, abstract or otherwise, in the coming year. Happy New Year to you all!
“Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” season 4 poster | Amazon Prime Video
Some experts say that occasionally it’s necessary to “take a break” from grief. I learned this firsthand during a frigid December 2020 Christmas day, 36 days after I lost my beloved 26-year-old son who died by suicide. My then 24-year-old daughter, Alexandra, returned home during this time, and we mourned together. Lounging in the living room in shabby sweatpants and tops, noshing on a conveyor-belt assortment of Trader Joe’s chips and other salty and sweet snacks that my dear childhood friend Anna supplied, we insulated ourselves, cranked up the heat indoors as the temperatures dipped to below freezing outdoors. Alexandra’s soft, furry slippers with funny smiling sloth faces, the ones that arrived a month prior in a condolence gift box from her former college roommate, Suzanna, felt like they were out of sync with the preceding extreme 36 days, oozing with despair, agony, regret, remorse and anger. We symbolized the walking wounded. Drained and hollow as if we were toilet plungers.
Who would believe that only a year prior, we were in New York City’s West Side in a beautiful church singing Christmas carols as if we were Carnegie Hall performers? Three hundred and sixty-five days later, half eaten tubs of white paper take-out food containers brimming with Chinese dumplings, noodles, fried rice and legions of lo mein lined the coffee table, our designated sanctuary, the view outside obstructed by the drapes drawn closed.
My daughter and I spent about twenty minutes scanning for TV channels to watch, searching for something to numb the pain. I finally surrendered to Alexandra’s request to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, especially since she had never seen it before. Before the tragedy, I was The-Marvelous-Mrs.-Maisel loyalistsince its premiere in 2017. If you are unfamiliar with the series, it opens in 1958 and ends in the early 1960s and centers around Miriam “Midge” Maisel. Although her role that begins as a happily married woman with two children changes, chasing her stand-up comedy dreams and adhering to her affluent New York City lifestyle remain constant.
After the tragedy, I was reluctant to watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel because I felt it was something that aligned with a “happy-people’s” existence. Not only did we end up watching the episodes of the new third season that Christmas, but we watched the previous two seasons as well!
There are so many things in the show that resonate with me. For starters, a lot of the show is filmed in New York City’s Greenwich Village, a hotbed of stand-up comedy. “The epicenter of the city’s 1960s counterculture movement” is by far my favorite place in the world. Even now, whenever I go there, the young heartbeat I feel in the village lifts my old, worn-out spirits. To me, this is the epitome of America, for the most part, at its best. The village is more than a melting pot. It is a pot of gold, laden with people from all walks of life. The important thing is that the village really is a village because it encourages free expression. If you are bullied anywhere else in the world for any reason, the best therapy is to spend a little time here. Although you may appear outwardly very different from others around you, the sense of belonging is inherent; there tends to be a feeling of recognition in the air. In fact, the village is where I enrolled and participated in stand-up comedy workshops in the 1980s and experienced my own marvelous, albeit short-lived, show biz stint.
Anyway, watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, f-bombs and all, saved our souls that fragile holiday season of 2020 and gave me faith knowing that although my laugh had lost a lot of its carefree boom, its flame had not faded.
So, this brings me to a very important date, February 18, 2022: season four of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. From the minute I heard about the new upcoming season,I was eager for its long-awaited arrival, like a kid getting his or her braces removed after walking around for two years with the metal invasion in their mouths.
At last! Friday night and I sat back, full throttle ahead, no one or nothing was going to vie for my time. My fellow blogger, Alec, would surely be pleased since quite ironically, he reminded me last week about the importance of fun.
As is, the new, season four, series rolls out two one-hour long episodes at a time. I planned to watch one hour of the show on Friday and the other hour on Saturday. Initially, I was timid to hit “play” because the minute I saw the old, familiar characters, my heart tumbled as I recalled the unbearable swords of circumstances that transpired in November 2019 and how the show helped me cope. Nonetheless, I hit the forward button, and one hour led to two. I was hooked from the beginning to the end of both episodes.
If you can get past the f-bombs and a few select scenes that some viewers may find inappropriate (nudity, profanity, alcohol, drugs and smoking, adult themes), the first two episodes are one big ode to the meaning of opposites. Free expression and individual voice versus repression and suppression. The importance of a financial framework versus the desire to pursue art as your true calling in life. And so many other things that call to mind the breadth of Greenwich Village, and its ability to tug hard at your heart strings and awaken your soul that was likely lost about the time your identity was wiped out when you understood and accepted the untruth behind the social conditioning of, “Big girls or big boys (especially) don’t cry.”
The first two episodes of season four of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel touched upon nearly every tenet of existentialism and so much more. Miriam, the main character, is ballsy and brash and bold and is going to be heard, damn it, no matter what, and turn over convention. Subsequently, though, she’s not about to part with her hoity-toity upper west side New York City tastes either. All the while, she’s trying to rise up again from a rubble of failures and secure her share of the American Dream.
What’s happening in the show at its core, synonymous with the Greenwich Village vibe, is that so much that is not talked about and kept taboo unhinges and revolts. It can no longer shut up. It cannot be shutdown. It needs to be spoken, heard, not judged or erased.
It needs the human seal of “I see you” approval that we are all desperate for. My once alive son was a good example of wanting to be seen, heard, appreciated, in spite of how his differences made him feel separate from the rest of the world.
It’s as simple as that.
What fits in with this overall “fitting in” theme is a book that I’ve just finished reading Wintering, the power of rest and retreat in difficult times by Katherine May (2020).
The author writes about her mental breakdown at 17-years-old and, after the experience, she talked about it and talked and talked. She continues the story as she writes:
“I am aware that I fly in the face of polite convention in doing this. The times when we fall out of sync with everyday life remain taboo. We’re not raised to recognize wintering or to acknowledge its inevitability. Instead, we tend to see it as a humiliation, something that should be hidden from view lest we shock the world too greatly. We put on a brave public face and grieve privately; we pretend not to see other people’s pain. We treat each wintering as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored. This means we’ve made a secret of an entirely normal process and have thereby given those who endure a pariah status, forcing them to drop out of ordinary life in order to conceal their failure. Yet we do this at great cost. Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered.“
Okay, so what I’ve realized about myself now is that, as opposed to Miriam, I became a “good girl” and discarded the rebel status that I initially strived toward. This outcome, I found out 35 years later, can be a consequence of living a so-called sober, so-called adult life. It’s not a bad thing that I’m no longer the firecracker Miriam is and, quite simply, the fight in me now is, for the most part, exhausted.
But the thing about grief is that it has forced me to make a place for it. It is locked in me, next to my memories and my hopes and dreams. In the process, grief has peeled me to the core. So now I am left with my core and me. I don’t have the strength nor burning desire to be a rebel anymore, but my inner voice says that I don’t want to keep hiding anymore either. I’m done with listening to all the blood-hungry critics in the world that managed to seize my brain and ferment it. I keep hearing the song, “Kill the voices” on the radio.
My son had lost his ability to “kill” those voices that erased him. So he did it the best way he knew how, impulsively and brutally, leaving us spewed like squashed roaches in the aftermath.
All the more reason that I’m not keen on too many opinions and certainly those that come from pulpits, real and imagined. I’m not keen too much on my own opinions either, because I found out the hard way, how many times I am more wrong than right.
One thing that I am keen on is hearing Midge’s voice, f-bombs and all. At the end of the day, the story really is about an outspoken woman who knows her worth. And it is clear in the show that women have to work twice as hard to succeed. In turn, if others give her a chance to tell her truth, maybe it will spread beyond places like the village where she performs stand-up comedy. Maybe, too, we can all start learning the impossible art of listening for the sake of hearing, not changing, ignoring or stifling; for the sake of an “I see you” universal nod.
So, after watching the first two episodes of season four last Friday night, I laid down in my bed in a flood of tears that was as surprising as a drain that bursts in the bathroom in the middle of the night. I realized how Mrs. Maisel lends her voice to me right now, because I’ve fallen so far inside myself, I don’t know if I can muscle my way out unscathed. I don’t know if I have the courage. I don’t know if I can kill the voices, or if they have killed me, metaphorically instead.
In the interim, I am trudging through this week, waiting for Friday to hear the voices and the antics that not only give me comic relief and, if I am lucky, grief relief, but also a channel where I imagine I am in my twenties again. It was during a time when I orchestrated my world so easily in a leopard top and black rimmed glasses, my voice booming into the microphone loud and clear, laughter rolling through like a seamless tide rolling in to cleanse the sediment on the crusty shoreline.
Twenty-two is an unlucky number for one of my closest friends. The reason she feels it is jinxed is that her mother died on the 22nd of September. The number, on the other hand, is a favorite one of mine, not necessarily lucky or unlucky, but a good powerful number in my eyes, and it was just happenstance that I was born on the 22nd of August, which happens to be five days away.
Don’t ask me what I’m doing for my birthday; likely, hiding under a clamshell, which is my plan every year that is yet to materialize. I think most suicide survivors have an incredible array of feelings and emotions to contend with when their birthdays roll around, beginning with “Why?” and ending with “Why?” and in the middle, a gossamer-spun dark cloak of shame, guilt, regret, sadness.
I spent my life grappling with depression that skyrocketed at adolescence. A few years after my last suicide attempt at 23, the darkest period of my life, I met an exceptionally trained, intuitively gifted psychiatrist. He presented me with an interesting theory. He said mental health experts were finding a growing body of evidence to suggest that when a mother considers aborting her child, but decides to birth it, the child is more prone to develop suicidal tendencies and thoughts throughout his or her life.
Now, I don’t know if my mom thought about aborting me. But I wouldn’t hold it against her. She had her two sons well over a decade before I crashed the party. I know for sure that it was not a surprise, but a shock for her to get pregnant for the third time. I know my mom was 36 and tired when she birthed me. All in all, I’m uncertain if that theory holds water as far as my mother is concerned, but it’s still an intriguing one.
As fate would have it and as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, I started to turn my life around more than 36 years ago, which doesn’t mean I still don’t wrestle with the gang of crazies that drop by uninvited inside my brain every once in a while. They set up a picnic there and start clamoring in dialogue laced with self-hatred and negativity. With the help of others, I’ve trained myself to block out the mental invasion. Some people at retirement age have achieved the level of mastery in their chosen field. I, in contrast, have achieved self-mastery. That accomplishment has brought me here, five days away from another birthday, four decades after my near-fatal 23rd year.
Since our family tragedy 21 months ago, I am flooded with memories of my birthday that involved my son. The last time I celebrated my birthday with him was five years ago. I remember feeling my usual self: in-sync and in harmony whenever I was with him. I don’t fully recall what we did, which was likely an informal dinner at our house, but I believe my son brought me a sweet card as he usually did, always signing it at the end with “Love” and then his first and last name. His custom signature struck me funny each and every time. Like I don’t know who my son is, and he has to sign his last name just to make sure? I always thought to myself after I read his cards.
My son wanted to strike out on his own from the time he hit adolescence. His idea of growing up was relocating to another state. A few years prior to the final birthday I spent with him, he had driven from the New England area with a friend, who was relocating to North Dakota. As it turned out this so-called friend just used him as a driving companion and, after their arrival, at the end of the week when this so-called friend settled in with his family that resided in the state, he fought with my son. Ultimately, in a rage, he drove my son to the airport, kicked him out of the car and threw his luggage and belongings after him before he rode away to his happily-ever life. Fortunately, a homeless man helped my son gather his items spewed all over the airport terminal. Needless to say, I paid a hefty price for his return flight that night, but I was delighted to do it. His life was priceless. I was so relieved when he returned home to us. In fact, I almost fainted from the feeling of euphoria the moment I saw him stroll, safe and whole, into my view at the airport terminal.
My son was always the restless type. He wanted to relocate to so many places all the time. The raw truth is, he wasn’t going to stay HERE on this earth for very long. He possessed a tumbleweed spirit. It’s ironic how often he, too, said he wanted to move to the desert out west one day, where tumbleweed thrives.
Anyway, four years ago I spent a lovely Sunday enjoying barbecue on our outside deck. I bid him goodbye without realizing how short our time together was in so many different ways. He had been living with his godmother, Pat, at the time. The next day, August 14, a Monday, he woke up and took her by surprise. He was packed and ready to go. Out of the blue he announced, “If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it.”
I was also clueless to the plan he executed when he moved from our state and drove away in the hopes of creating a better life for himself in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The trajectory, of course, was the beginning of his demise.
He left no trail behind. After I learned the news of his departure four years ago, I was hard hit and felt abandoned and betrayed over his behavior to dash off without notice and without waiting long enough to at least celebrate my birthday together. Mind you, everyone in Bowling Green was a stranger to him. He had no job waiting there for him. He only had his car and a small amount of savings. He was doomed from the start, and I knew it. All I thought about was how I wasn’t able to give him a proper goodbye or proper send-off with a small family gathering or a card or present. It just didn’t feel right from the start.
Miraculously, he pulled it off. After a rough start, he secured successful employment with an incredible company that mandated college classes and on-the-job training. Scoring an 86 in trigonometry, his least favorite subject, he proved to be a solid “A” student all the way. However, he failed when it came to shutting down the demons in his mind for very long. In the end, the raw truth is, they won his soul at 26 as they came so close to winning mine at 23.
Every birthday I celebrated as a mother, all I wanted from my children was their presence. I was grateful from the second I found out they were in my belly. In fact, their godmother and I prayed over my belly for months before both of their births.
No other “stuff” could come close to satisfying me on my birthdays or any other day. In Bowling Green, my son nearly forgot my birthdays when they rolled around. I didn’t care in the least. My present was seeing how well he was doing and feeling so good about his course in life. That’s where I deposited my faith: wellness and success. It sounds corny as heck, but my greatest joy was to watch him and my daughter grow up into strong, capable, healthy adults.
Since the tragedy, grief has beat me down to a pulp of an apricot, but it has not warped my sense of gratitude. This year will be my second birthday living a “new normal” while hiding under a clamshell sounds appealing and homey.
Likely, though, when the 22nd hits, I will shower and change into something I haven’t worn for awhile, and join the kids’ godmother or someone else in my tiny circle and go out for lunch or dinner and mark the occasion in solidarity.
Another day in paradise, I can hear my son remark sarcastically as he so often did in his latter years.
Yes, I say to myself, “Another day in paradise” with a nuance of true meaning in the words. I imagine a sun-kissed, sandy seascape where there exists clam shells galore for the sole purpose of feeling as if you’re grateful to be alive.
Connecticut Press Club Award Banquet, July, 27, 2021
In all my days, I’ve arrived late, on time, but never early for a function. When my daughter, her godmother, who is my best friend, and I arrived for the Connecticut Press Club (CPC) awards banquet, we had 20 minutes to burn before the banquet started.
Last week, I wrote aboutmy surprise when I realized I won the 2020 CPC second place for my blog post. After some arm-twisting from my daughter, I agreed to attend the awards banquet. What sealed the deal, as I also previously mentioned, was when I auspiciously discovered an inexpensive but beautiful turquoise necklace at a local store that seemed custom made for my black pantsuit that I planned to wear for the event.
Turquoise Necklace
“Turquoise, focus on turquoise.”
I know this is a nontraditional mantra, but repeating these four words helped me release most of my anxiety and PTSD symptoms on the day of the event. In my mind, all the negative, black thoughts were switched out. In their place rolled out a mellow turquoise the color of a New Mexico sky, moments after sunrise, very much akin to many of the photos that my friend sister Anne shoots.
What I am now aware of, that I was unaware of before, is that individuals suffering from mental health challenges cannot employ a mantra to slay their demon minds. Their demon minds slay them. For my son, this meant, outside of his workweek, total isolation.
I remember shortly before our family tragedy, I tried to help a close friend who was undergoing a tremendous amount of anxiety. I advised her to incorporate self-talk into her daily routine. Frustrated, she replied, yelling, “Self-talk doesn’t work for me.”
It was the first time that I started to comprehend the extent of individual variations of mental illness. Still, slaying my private demons decades ago, I fell into the group of positive psychology proponents. I believed that if you incorporate strategies like self-talk, mantras, positive affirmations and the like, it can help turn on a fluorescent light inside a darkened mindset. “Attitude adjustment” was the core belief. Now I know, you have to deal with mental illness before dealing with the attitude. In other words, if your mind is programmed differently as my son’s was, void of windows that allow the healing light to flow, there is no magic mantra to pull from a magician’s hat.
So, lucky me, last Tuesday evening, I possessed the mental clearance to leave the safe confines of my home. Upon arrival, wearing my turquoise necklace and saying my turquoise mantra, I can’t get enough of the turquoise sky crowning the Greenwich Water Club in Cos Cob, CT, a neighborhood in the town of Greenwich. The establishment is a private dinner/recreational club with an emphasis on water-related sports and boating activities for members, I gather, who never have and never will have to poke their rubber gloved hand into the cool water of a ceramic goddess and wash her majesty, a toilet.
Greenwich Water Club, Cos Cob, CT
As we make our way through the nearly full parking lot, the dust and sand from the spew of pebbles seems to undermine the club’s reputation. The clubhouse building ahead is impressive, but not imposing, perched on the Mianus River. The grounds are overrun by children and adolescents rather than adults. Members eat, swim at the built-in pool and, most obvious, relax, wane with the waning summer’s day that has turned into early evening. It is a Tuesday, my least favorite day of the week, but the sound of the children’s light laughter feels like a massage targeting just the right pressure points on my brain.
Inside a reserved space upstairs from the main restaurant, we are greeted with friendly CPC members who dispense name tags and apparently have no qualms about our early arrival. I scan the other name tags on the table, spotting one familiar one, Amy Oestreicher. It is a young woman and, although I haven’t been on Facebook for a number of months, a Facebook friend and fellow writer, not to mention artist and actress. If given an opportunity, I make a mental note to approach her after she arrives.
Our trio nests in three leather, oversized chairs. I am stationed like a cut-down tree stump. I am there, but not really. My daughter prods me, “Go network.” Fortunately, it is the crowd I’ve grown up with: writers, journalist, PR professionals and all creative types that evenly pump my blood flow. I can do this. I rise and converse with a man who turns out to be the contest director. He informs me that the blogging category was fiercely competitive. Boo-yah! Ego found after being lost through 20 months of grief, isolation and sheer trepidation.
Later, in my seat, CPC officials, along with the evening’s emcee, award-winning journalist and TV personality, Mercedes Velgot, graciously greet us.
Before the presentation, though, I catch the eye of a woman directly across the way, who is with a dapper-looking gentleman. I smile and quietly admire the bright colors she wears.
“Do you know her?”
“No,” I reply to my daughter.
The presentation begins as Mercedes takes her place behind the podium, svelte and towering in a little black dress that elevates the word “perfect” to a higher level.
I’ve attended a vast array of awards presentations through the years and, overall, they are boring, not due to monotone speeches, but because the ego inflation makes my gut heavy, like it’s a soda can depository.
In total contrast, Mercedes’ opening remarks are succinct but packed with the kind of compassion, empathy, and honesty that makes you feel like you are listening to a dear friend’s counsel in your living room. The theme, of all things, is how every cloud has a silver lining, and how we need to learn to discover it.
She goes on to elucidate the many COVID-19 challenges of the prior year and how our world suffered in the eye of death, illness and separation. She also explains how her nine-year, award-winning travel show was canceled. Amazingly, too, she speaks about her voluntarism in different capacities during the height of COVID-19 as a front line worker, including training as vaccination assistant.
“This year has really taught us to be resilient. It’s taught us how to pivot. It’s taught us how to be grateful for each and every day. “
In addition, she credits prayer and “spiritual strength topersevere through all of life’s challenges.”
And adds, “Here’s to all of you … your talents in finding beauty in the human spirit through your pens. Keep writing and keep looking for your silver linings.”
I am blown over by her loving kindness and if the mind demons kidnapped me, instead of sitting in this lovely room with an extraordinary group of people, I would be alone in my bedroom faced with a three-D movie screen in the maniac projection room of my mind in morbid reflection of things best forgotten.
As if listening to the awesome speaker and watching other award recipients claim prizes wasn’t enough, when the award is announced for Amy Oestreicher, Mercedes informs the crowd that the recipient’s parents are present to accept the posthumous award for their daughter.
Posthumous award? How can Amy be dead? She was so young, talented – intent on living.
Question your thinking. I remember one of Mercedes suggestions during her opening remarks. Question your thinking. Self-centered was I to think I would be the one and only griever among the group. The one and only pain-ridden person. Immediately, after the ceremony, I offer my condolences to Amy’s parents whose daughter died at the age of 34 from medical complications only four months prior. The grieving dad, it is obvious, is the mom’s anchor. Mom is a ball of fire. In spite of living through out-of-order death, the mom is an optimist. Her mission is to spend her life honoring Amy’s memory. The mom’s positivity is contagious and my faith-o-meter brims over.
My brilliant daughter advises me that I should mirror the grieving mom’s optimism. She winks her eye when she asks, confidently, “What are the odds of you meeting her and her husband on the same night you win an award?”
I nod my head. Is it coincidence or fate?
Looking back, the entire evening is lifted high in my memory by a faith muscle, fueled by the encouragement and support of my blogging community (thank you all!) and my close friends and, of course, propelled by my spitfire daughter.
ME Connecticut Press Club Award Banquet, July, 27, 2021
To sum it up, I recall a well-known mantra that is intended to help anxiety: “Soham,” meaning “I am that” or “I am the universe.”
The idea reinforces the knowledge that I am one tiny brush stroke in a massive piece of artwork, a mixed-media, collage of life. The awards banquet last Tuesday is significant in my life because it reminds me of my insignificance. It reminds me how I can comfortably take a seat in the arena of life because whether we are in Cos Cob, Connecticut, or Canton, Ohio, or south of the Congo River, there is a designated space for everyone of us if we are wired properly to see it.
I am reminded, too, that no matter how stationary I am at any given moment, time is fleeting. Nothing remains the same. Everything is temporary. One day we are there, sitting. The next day “Poof!” we disappear. Paradoxically, as if on a magnificent piece of artwork, all parts, seen and unseen, make a whole, a never-ending composition of triumph.
It is all there is and ever will be. Right now as my own life fleets by, I can’t stop time, but I don’t have to wait until it is too late to say and claim it: I am that.
The day before Fourth of July 2010, my now ex-husband flickered around like a moth in a pageant of holiday lights. Impulsively, he corralled my then 17-year-old son and his best friend, Robert, and they jumped in his vehicle and rocketed away as if running from a disturbed hive of hornets and disappeared.
It was a spur of the moment decision. They traveled some 300 miles to another state to purchase legal fireworks, but illegal in our state, and they would motor them back to fire up at our house for the holiday.
I was all for it. My ex had spent the earlier part of the year in a dark depression and to witness signs of rebirth in him was like drinking a glass of sweet tea on a particularly hot day in Austin, Texas, where I attended college many moons ago.
When my ex and the young men returned with the booty many hours later, I discovered my ex had spent some $800 on fireworks. For nearly every previous Fourth of July, we “had a blast” in our backyard with legal, inexpensive fireworks intended for simple family play. I knew this fact, but I retrieved my rose-colored glasses, secured them perfectly over my eyes and did not argue. Instead, I shelved the fact that we were having difficulty meeting our monthly mortgage payment, never mind spending an insane amount of money on a frivolous, last-minute action.
I was determined to believe: we would meet our debt, and the daily stress would alleviate. We were taking the bumpy, longer-than-planned route, but we would arrive at our happily-ever-after destination and nothing was going to disintegrate The Maxwell House, as I first dubbed our happy home in 2002.
What I didn’t see was the separate household, some 600 miles away, that my then husband had begun to set up. What I didn’t see was his relocation to his new home in November 2010. What I didn’t see was 18-year-old Robert’s accidental death in January 2011, shortly after our marriage ended. And, I certainly didn’t envision, in a trillion years, my son’s premeditated death in November 2019.
All I saw was the solid black canvas screen that projected the light show on that last Fourth our family, including my daughter and the children’s godmother, would spend together. In the backyard, my now ex-husband launched dozens of bottle rockets, among his arsenals, into the sky as if he were a comic character set free from the confines of a book. The two teenage boys followed behind, laughing, mimicking his frantic movements. From the deck above, the rest of us screamed in delight, flashing smiles almost as big as the dazzling, sizzling and soaring fireworks. It was a night to remember and behind my rose-colored glasses I wore that night, no one could convince me that we would not experience decades of forthcoming holidays like boxes of traditional firecrackers strung together.
The illegal fireworks that my now ex bought to celebrate July 2010 accompanied us through 2017, which was the final Fourth I spent with the children’s godmother and my son, who had inherited the responsibility of launching the fireworks since the dissolution of our family unit. (My daughter was working as a summer camp counselor in Upstate New York.) Sadly, I remember on our final blastoff together, I felt irritated and bored, impatient between launches; thinking of all the projects and ruminating over an endless task list in my mind. And then it was as if “POOF” he was gone. First, he relocated to Kentucky, some 600 miles away. And then two years after the relocation, he disappeared entirely like stars and roman candles that fizzle out and leave behind a black tar hue that blinds your world without any sign of light or an escape door.
Fourth of July was my son’s best friend’s favorite holiday. It was my son’s second favorite holiday, after Halloween.
I’ve heard that many mourning mothers memorialize their dead children all over their homes with photos and other reminders of holidays and good times past. After the funeral at the end of 2019, the children’s photos remained where they had always been. The new addition in the entrance hallway, above a set of stairs leading to the front door, was an 8.5 inch by 10 inch framed photo of my son that was signed by his co-workers in Kentucky and delivered to the funeral home as a thoughtful gift.
By mid-March of the following year, I started getting woozy from the grief build up of viewing him in the photos at different stages in his life, and having him stare intensely at me from that enlarged photo at the entrance hall day in and day out as if pleading to me, “You saved the world. Why did you not save me?”
Feeling the blood on my hands, the maggot-like raw reality of the tragic situation ate me up. I would never see his white toothy smile. Hear his irritating giggle, reminiscent of mine. Or smell his familiar Irish Spring soap scent in real life. He filled every part – big, small, significant and insignificant – of my day in, day out life, and then “POOF” he was gone.
And so it was, I silenced all the expert opinions and advice and in stillness boxed up every single photo and reminder of him, only to deposit the painful treasures safely out of sight. Fortunately, my therapist stood by my decision. Afterwards, my angst, miraculously, subsided. The blank wall where the signed photograph resided bothered me though. The blankness seemed to grow emptier. I didn’t have a clue what I could display there.
The following month, I attended an art show, my artist friend’s exhibition. Harold is a gifted man, and I am truly humbled every time I view his creations. Since my new normal, I allow a handful of people into my life, Harold and his wife Chris have been two of them. We share on a gut level that never fails to fill my spirit with faith.
Anyway, after the show ended and I was headed towards my automobile on that beautiful spring day, Harold stopped me.
“I have something for you.”
“What?” I responded, surprised.
He summoned me to follow him to his vehicle and I did. It was then that he presented me with a vibrant-colored abstract painting of his.
“I wanted you to have this.”
As I stared at it, mesmerized by the boldness, I turned it over, only to find its title, “Fourth of July.”
After thanking the artist, I responded, misty eyed, “I have a blank wall that’s been waiting for this.”
Harold’s painting looks larger than life on my previously blank wall ever since. It isn’t a photo of my son. It is a piece of art that I see, perhaps, 20, 30 or more times a day. The bright colors fill my my mind’s dark horizon like fireworks blasting in the sky. The image fills me with an abundance of Fourth of July memories that I once was so grateful to share with my now sizzled out young family. The image energizes me and ignites my soul ablaze.
I also feel like the painting represents an eternal flame that fans my faith and courage, so I manage to accomplish the daily climb up and climb down on the stairs of a house once built on petals of love as sweet as the scent of roses.
You can read the post in its entirety, but I will elaborate on #9 below.
“Accept the unresolved. This is very painful because the loss left you amputated and you may never know why it happened. This item is not for the faint of heart and takes tremendous courage. So, I am providing this suggestion because if you are continuously seeking resolution to your loss, you may find yourself deeply disappointed. Some losses will never bring answers. They do not present themselves with a reason. Seeking a reason for your loss can lead to countless tears and more loss.”
The first word that jumps out at me is “Amputated.” Spot on. The word has a brand-new meaning, and I have added the word into my custom New Normal dictionary. (I will say more about this word in an upcoming post.)
Anyway, tip #9 resonates with me dealing with my 26-year-old’s suicide. Not knowing why it happened is an understatement. Days into nights, I draw infinite timelines that reach far back, long before my pregnancy, to try and solve the unsolvable puzzle. I arrive at endless theories and hypotheses and as as a writer with an over-juiced imagination, my ideas can usher me into a tunnel of despair. I mean, do I really think his father’s ancestors were Kentucky slave owners before it was a free state and somehow my son was cursed because of the “sins of his ancestors”? Oh boy, these are excellent seeds for fiction, but for a sane mind? I don’t think so. In fact, my son was one of the most compassionate men ever born on the face of this planet. So the WHY?WHY?WHY? equals rolls of wallpaper that serve no purpose except to outfit a room for me to mourn, groan and grow destitute and depressed inside of. The only way for me to lock the room away from my reach is to find a key of courage. Fortunately, the Serenity Prayer and the phrase “courage to change the things I can” is a tool I’ve had in my toolbox for nearly 36 years as a part of the 12-step community.
So, okay, as far as seeking resolution to the loss, yes, I’ve hit rock bottom with disappointment. I’m a trained journalist. I want answers, black and white. Periods only. No semi-colons. But that’s not how it works. In this case, I have been given a blank page, but there is no formula for grammar.
There is NO resolution. No reason. Nada. Except, interestingly, my friend shared a very intimate story with me that pumps me up with faith. He and his wife have been married for nearly 30 years. In the last 15 years, they had been resigned to the fact that they lived in apathetically separate lives. After tragedy hit my household, during the day of the wake, the couple planned to attend separately. Strangely, they glanced at each other and simultaneously said, “Let’s go together!”
And they walked into the funeral home TOGETHER. Since that day forward, their relationship did a 180 degree turn. They not only share many things now, but they are also uncovering the traits and characteristics in each other that first made them fall in love almost three decades ago.
Wow!
My friend revealed, “I hate to say it, but your son’s death brought us together. Your son’s death gave us new life.”
Frankly, I wish my son stayed alive, and my couple friends existed under one roof as strangers. But, you know what? I’ll take this mild sense of resolution, because the unresolved equals despair, a black hole inside which a foundation of faith and hope is impossible.
On the other hand, the spark that has ignited between this couple you can build on. And, of course, a spark can light a fire in the world. In fact, my friend’s story brought me an afterglow of faith in a very uncanny way. Naturally, this was completely unprepared for and unplanned, but it is a route destined for me to figure out. It goes without saying, there is no GPS for this trip, and this is something that I had not at all set my sights on, but, for today, I’m okay simply taking in the sights.
Call it mermaid tears, sea glass, beach glass, ocean glass, trash glass, I have a special affinity for it.
Working for an art consultant, recently a painting “Beach Glass” struck me with its equal parts of allure and demure. The artist’s intricate composition juxtaposes indigo blots and tortoise-toned greens along with the palest of frosty crystalline shades. Tinged with a craggy texture, each gem sparkles faintly.
Inspired, I delved into researching sea glass, which is discarded and broken bottles and other glass products that the water’s waves and currents tumble and smooth. Then and there I saw my reflection in the glass.
You see, before tragedy struck, I was head over heels in love with things like flamingos and poodles. Now a sense of apathy and distance divides me from pretty things. As impossible as it would have sounded a mere eight months ago, even scheduling a medi-pedi falls way low on the priority list these days.
Instead, I am like an empty bottle discarded and abandoned on the shore, broken beyond repair. However, as sunrise rolls into sunset, I sense a glimmer of faith in a repurposed life.
I read that it can take seven to ten years in a constant surf environment for broken glass to transpose to mermaid tears.
For me, it will take a lifetime for the tactile edges to heal, become smoother with no shine, only frost. Fortunately, the hands of the living waters are gentle and as soft as a bed of seagrass.
Living in a new normal, I am still alive on this journey by flying on the wings of a small, select tribe. They hold me up when my legs turn to rubber. They stand firmly beside me despite the days when my words are thunderous and moods storm. When I am surrounded by dark, they are my light switch.
They infuse me with oxygen and hope. Faith has been called “the substance of hope,” and that is what my tribe extends to me the most.
In those first futile days, days after my world turned pitch black, my friend sister Anne, an amazing photographer, sent me the most glorious photographs that looked so polar opposite to the despair I was experiencing. As it turned out, they were part of my faith-fabric that sewed my unraveling world together.
Photo Credit: Anne Yoken
Photo Credit: Anne Yoken
“The sun always rises no matter how dark the night.” This is what my friend sister wrote along with her photos.
So far, the sun has risen. Ironically, the brightest, reddish, orangey sunrise (and the only one I was up early enough to witness) was the morning we buried my son. I still picture its splendor and wonder if underneath its robust spirited color, one could unearth a stairway to heaven.
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
Fueled with an entrepreneurial type spirit, I ventured into a website business that is now over two years old and hasn’t produced a dime. The roads I’ve encountered on the journey have been a pothole nightmare and at times dead men curves that took me into dark places from which I miraculously
Most recently, a stranger in the mix, who learned about some of the circumstances, said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Okay, Mr. Einstein, what do you think I do? Give up? Surrender? Close the book on the Great Idea?
Speaking of books, that’s another constant roadblock. My novel has been on a heck of a journey since 1996. Years of editing. Years lost to inactivity. The good news is, I landed a reputable agent in 2018; reworked the storyline; fleshed out the proposal, which now constitutes a series of books. The not-so-good news is, it sits unpublished.
Mr. Einstein, what do you advise I do? Throw the book out along with the series? A seriesthat has the strong potential to revolutionize a certain segment of society?
So, is this constant creative roadblock insanity or is it a means to test my faith?
I just finished reading Guarded by Christ: Knowing the God Who Rescues and KeepsUs by Heather Holleman, and I had an epiphany.
Ms. Holleman writes, “Choosing to look for the “new mercies” of God each morning for me became a spiritual practice to build hope. I had to fight the despair. I had to find a way to stay afloat in hope when drowning in depression. It was that diligent and forceful daily preaching of hope to my soul. This practice corresponded with my desire to writeagain, and my friend Laurie first suggested my daily recording of new mercies in a blog format for others to read.”
Ms.Holleman continues, “But it felt hopeless to write. I had endured a decade of rejection letters from publishers. ‘You should blog. I would read your blog,’ Laurie said.
Hope rose up in my heart that stored so many words just waiting to get out….”
I feel Ms. Holleman’s hope and enthusiastically heard her literally. I decided to blog again on faith. Because one thing I do know, and it’s something I don’t have to wait for, and something that is in the here and now is I have a pretty impressive faith muscle.
I may not be a success in the world’s eyes. In the soul department, though, I do believe I’ve had some wins. How can I not? For the last 35 years, I’ve lived on borrowed time andduring that time I’ve mended relationships with others as well as with myself, but most importantly with God.
For the last 35 years, I lift my eyes up and search for new mercies every single day, because I train on a constant basis in the marathon of the soul business. As long as my soul is stable, I can drive these crazy avenues and streets in the game of life, knowing freedom is not too far off in the distance on the eternal high road. It’s insane to imagine how refreshing the feathery wings beneath me will feel.
WTF? (Where's the faith?) 