To backtrack for a moment: Like many, I carry invisible scars. Some days, venturing out feels like navigating a minefield. There was an event out of town, one that involved a precious child I adore. Logic dictated I should be there, celebrating with everyone else. Yet, a deep, primal instinct urged me to say no and stay home. Guilt gnawed at me, the familiar monster of “shoulda, woulda, coulda.”
With a sigh, I embarked on errands. As I wrestled with the “should haves,” a familiar wave of loneliness washed over me. Trips, at last completed, I climbed into the car and turned on the radio. The lyrics, a powerful ballad by Melissa Etheridge titled “This is Not Goodbye,” which I had never heard before, transcended physical presence. The lyrics spoke of goodbyes that weren’t endings, but simply chapters turning.
I pulled over, unable to contain my emotions. In that moment, it became crystal clear. It was not about blind faith, but trusting the divine spark within us. Even when it feels counterintuitive to follow the spark that guides us on our unique paths.
By honoring my intuition, my own needs and saying no to the event, a space had opened up. A space of grace that, quite literally, allowed a visit from my son, Marshall, who had passed over four years ago at the far too young age of 26. However brief, it was a confirmation that love endures, that some connections defy the boundaries of time and space.
So, the next time that nagging “should I?” creeps in, take a moment. Breathe. Listen within. You might just be surprised by the unexpected beauty that awaits when you honor your own truth. It might just guide you towards something far more magical than you could ever have planned, reminding you that you are always held, loved, and guided.
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Note: I mentioned this artificial Christmas tree experience in last week’s blog post.
The attic stairs groaned under my weight as I lugged the artificial, five-foot Christmas tree down.This year, decorating it was my mission, but it turned into a stark reminder of what had been and what was no longer.Over four years had passed since I had last touched it, the weight of tragedy replacing the joy and family healing it once symbolized.
As I set it down in the living room, I remembered way back to 2009 when the economic recession hit. Despite the hardship, our four-member family had weathered the storm. As per tradition, my then husband, two children and I had brought home a freshly cut tree that year. The next day when I had stood back to marvel at the tree I had finished decorating by myself (no one else liked decorating), the entire tree had toppled over on me! It was a strange, almost foreshadowing event, a prelude to the emotional avalanche that would engulf our lives just a year later. My sudden divorce, husband’s abandonment, the financial ruin, the loss… it all came crashing down the following year in 2010 like that heavy Douglas fir.
My soon-to-be ex-husband’s breakdown also had shattered our family in that year, leaving just me and my two adolescent children to face an uncertain future together. During that sad Christmas season, in the gaudy, multi-colored artificial tree we found at Walmart, my daughter and I saw a reflection of our broken selves, along with a flicker of determination to rise again. And rise again the three us us did, against all odds. Despite its disco ball appearance, the artificial Christmas tree symbolized strength, and we had purchased it, replacing our usual fresh tree that year. When we looked at it, it filled us with faith in the future, and we enjoyed it every year until 2018.
But then came 2019, the year that shattered what remained of our world. My daughter and I spent Christmas in front of greasy cartons of Chinese take-out food, the bare house echoing with sorrow. Holiday decorations lay banished in the attic, mere ghosts of past joy. In 2020, I ordered a three-foot “pencil” tree and a few handfuls of decorations that became our new holiday tradition.
This Christmas, stroking the Walmart-bought tree, memories of 2019 washed over me, the sharp sting of grief still fresh after all this time. The idea of decorating it with its own ornaments, relics of childhood Christmases, which I had also fetched from the attic, exasperated my silent ache, a reminder of the son I’d lost too soon. The once joyous act of decorating the family tree now felt like a painful, unbearable ritual, each ornament a monument to a life that was stolen from us. I opted for the familiar comfort of the pencil tree and its decorations.
Yet, returning those old treasures to the attic felt impossible. As tears welled up, a spark of something else flickered within me. While the pain of being a survivor remained, the memories of other past Christmases reminded me that the same decorated artificial tree had weathered countless storms alongside our one-time family of three, and had become a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, even in the face of fleeting life.
And that’s when I knew what I had to do. I decided to let it go. I posted an ad online, offering the Christmas tree for free.
The first two responses led to disappointment, but then came a message that tugged at my heartstrings. A single mother, struggling to make ends meet, desperately wanted the tree for her four-year-old son. My heart softened, and I did the unthinkable. I decided to give her not only the Christmas tree, but almost all of the rest of it — the lights, the ornaments, even the memories they held.
In that moment, I knew this was more than just giving away holiday decor. It was about passing on a flicker of hope, a spark of joy that could illuminate someone else’s holiday season.
“My son would have wanted your son to have it,” I explained after informing her of my decision, her profuse thanks still ringing in my ears.
Final Letting Go …
Since I was going out that evening, I left the bundle outside my garage door for her to pick up. Before pulling out of the driveway, I took a final photo of everything. A wave of bittersweet emotions washed over me. Sadness for what I had lost, but also a sense of relief and liberation.
This Christmas, like the last four before it, my home may not be filled with the familiar sights and sounds of our pre-tragedy celebrations. But in my heart, I know that the spirit of Christmas lives on. It lives on in the kindness of strangers who lend an empathetic ear, in the joy of a child, and in the quiet strength that allows us to rise from the ashes and stand ourselves tall, like a noble fir.
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June; deaf but doesn’t know it! Rescued from Alabama
Gemini “Gemi”; the first rescue who “rescued us“
Since our family tragedy, my mind has a tendency to race when I drive. Let’s put it this way, the average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day, but when I’m driving, 15 minutes or more down the road, probably a day’s worth of thoughts burst into my brain that amount to something likened to a hefty slice of the milky way.
I am beyond grateful that my daughter moved closer to home last August. So is she, because at the beginning of the month, as the world heralded in 2023, my daughter and her friends went on a long weekend escape, and I drove over 40-minute stretches one way for four days in a row to spend the day with her two fur baby rescue cats.
In my mind, the coming new year simply reinforced how the world continues to move on. In the revelers’ mental “crystal balls” they foresaw job promotions, reunions, trips, graduations and so many bright future possibilities. Over three years ago, I was part of this group. Now, I lack a crystal ball and determination. All I know is that it amounts to another lost year without my son. Another year in which I will strain a little bit harder to recall his deep voice, his silly smile, the way he glowed and his thick eyelashes fluttered when I assured him of his impending millionaire status by the time he turned 40.
Another year … another year … was my highway song this past New Year’s weekend.
“Did you stay up until midnight?” My daughter asked me in a text on the morning of January 1st.
I didn’t have the heart to inform her that, no, I was unloading laundry from the dryer at around midnight, trying to erase killer thoughts and staying to myself because I didn’t want to hinder anyone’s festive mood.
New Year’s Day evening rolled around, and I came home from the fur babies after a particularly disturbing exchange of “highway talk.” I sulked, sad and silent until I picked up my phone and saw an IM from my cousin in Ukraine, wishing me Happy New Year.
At first, I thought she contacted me for the sole reason of informing me of the arrival of the package. In actuality, she simply sent a wish: Happy New Year, my dear family.
No strings attached to her greeting. She didn’t receive the package, but she still cared enough to take the time out of her war-savaged world to wish me a happy New Year.
Now, I found something else to worry about. The package. Was it lost? Stolen? I mean, there is a war going on after all.
On January 2, I received the following IM:
I received your package today. I can’t express the joy of my children!!! I am very grateful to you for so many things!!! Everything is very good. one jacket was small for my son, and the boots were small for my daughter, everything else fit!!! I sincerely thank you, your friends. this is a very big help for me
Suddenly, 2023 came into full view by examining one sugar cube out of the big, bad bowl of unknowns.
Was I feeling better? Yes and no. I do best when I don’t judge ANY of my feelings, because my feelings remind me that I am a human being, a work in progress. Off or on the highway, it’s important for me to recognize the gravity of a situation and work through my feelings in order to move forward. NOTE: “Move forward” in this case does not mean “let go” of the grief because, as others have noted: we grieve because we love. (How lucky is that? LOL!) Moving forward, in this case, means to step through each day and be true to myself by allowing my feelings — whatever they are and for however long they exist. I consciously worked on this process for nearly 40 years, and what I’ve most definitely learned is that no one feeling will last forever (at least in my case). In addition, each and every time I sit with whatever feeling I am experiencing, I am stronger and more confident. The more I build myself up in this way, the less I have to tear others down. I am at peace in the world.
Feeling good all the time, FOR ME, is toxic positivity. It doesn’t work. I tried it in my early 20s and failed miserably. I remember when at 25 years old, I was out of control and a mess of emotions, because I always stuffed them behind a happy face. I couldn’t differentiate one emotion from another. How could I when I erased all my so-called negative feelings? My first newfound emotion was utter rage. (It makes sense to me now, because how else was I going to feel after having my identity robbed?) The day arrived when a mentor advised, “Embrace it. Embrace the rage.”
At first, I thought she was crazy. Then I decided I would try it. Day after day, I locked myself in the safety of my car and just hollered and screamed. That was my way to embrace the unwelcomed turbulence in my mind and before I knew it, it diminished in size and lost its demonic proportions. In other ways, over many years, I proceeded to deal and integrate other feelings and emotions. I embraced the pain. Embraced the sadness. Embraced the sorrow. Embraced everything else.
Before long, I could breathe normally again, and even learned to embrace the joy and the laughter, which I had felt guilty over. Suddenly I realized I could embrace the newness of a situation. Embrace the familiarity of old sheets, newly washed and calling for my tired body.
Mind you, embracing all this messy stuff wasn’t accomplished in a chronological or logical sense. I remember a lot of laughter while experiencing some of the most challenging, pent up feelings.
I consider myself fortunate in so many ways. Since I was 25, I learned how to embrace my messiness, because “my healers” embraced me during the process. I was never too messy to not be loved.
Maybe during the 1980s, folks were more in tune with their emotions. These days it seems no one wants to hear a sour puss or a sad puss or someone who isn’t happy and a great success through and through. Maybe it started with the inception of Fakebook when we lost our personal intimacy and human humility. Anyway, I’ve lost most of my early “healers” who loved every single bit of “the messy” I presented. I am grateful for their legacy, because it carries me and keeps me in balance.
“It’s okay,” I tell myself as I embrace what feels like but really isn’t the lowest of lowly emotions.
“It’s okay,” I tell myself when I feel I “shouldn’t” feel joy at a given moment, like when my grand fur babies are purring alongside me. “It’s okay,” I tell June, the deaf fur baby who chewed up my slippers. I can empathize with her anxiety. (Later, I found out it was Gemi who did it!)
“It’s okay,” I reiterate. (Before the tragedy I wouldn’t have been so understanding.)
I don’t need a crystal ball to see if it’s going to be another year of trials and tribulations, haunting memories and sorrow. It’s going to be up and down and all around, and with each passing day, I grow a day closer to the raw truth of my death. Even if I could have a crystal ball, I’d resist. Through it all, those wise owls that were once in my life gifted me with the priceless notion of faith. It’s made me into a big, bad mama, and I’ll take the ride flying solo, ‘cause I CAN, damn it. This is what I have learned. It is my proud culture pumping in my blood. In essence, I’m a born coward, yet biting the bullet, closing my eyes, taking baby steps into the landmine of life. I can do it, I can do it.Here I go, watch me.
Two weeks ago, Halloween “backup” M&M’s ready, yet our house was dark. I had stopped celebrating Halloween a couple of years beforeour tragedy. Frankly, the holiday became more of a hassle than something that symbolized nostalgia or fun.
When this Halloween rolled in, I was alone at home, and the sun was beginning to set. Suddenly, Ding Dong!
Oh, gee! I mean, really? Aren’t the kids suppose to wait until nightfall to start trick-or-treating? I thought to myself.
Go away! I commanded in my mind. Halloween reminds me of what no longer is and will never be to the point of cruelty.
Ding Dong!
I recall the phone conversation I had with my 27-year-old daughter an hour earlier when I told her I would not be distributing Halloween candy.
“How can you deprive little kids? Don’t you care?” she grumbled.
“There were only two little kids I cared about,” I retorted.
“Oh, I see you are in a ‘mood.’” No, I want to say to her, but refrain from ruining her evening. Not a mood. I’m in my constant state of agony.
So I decide to bolt down the hall, ready to open the stupid door and give the irritating child some M&M’s, but I espy a dark-haired boy’s back. He’s returning to his parents who wait at the end of the driveway.
I know darn well I can chase after him outside and beckon him to come back, but I freeze.I stand there on the other side of the front door until I suddenly notice the dark house across the street. In 20 years at my residence, my neighbor’s front porch was always lit up and ready for Halloween. I make the stark realization that he’s not giving out candy either. Guilt heightened. I feel like I double-crossed the boy and now play a part in ruining some stranger’s childhood, because not only did I not give him M&M’s, I couldn’t put my sadness aside to at least glance at his costume that he probably waited all month to wear and show off.
What a Halloween scrooge I am. What if when my kids were young they had to deal with miserly people hiding behind dark porch facades. When they were young, in fact, most of the houses in our neighborhood celebrated.
Two years ago it was the last Halloween I would ever talk to my 26-year-old son alive. Since eight grade he had battled depression, and he was at an all-time low.
“We had a few good Halloweens, didn’t we?” I asked him over the telephone in an attempt to raise his spirits.
For a moment, when he replied, “Yeah!” his mood lifted, and I intuitively knew we were both remembering many of our good times together as a happy family. Hearing him two Halloweens ago exclaim a mere four-letter word “Yeah!” made my memory rocket back to one of those funky 70s dances. When those disco balls started turning and twinkling, you danced without restraint and no matter what was happening in your personal life, you hit the lottery on that dance floor.
“Yeah!” I banked on those happy memories to keep him alive, to fuel him. I also learned, too late, the best investments can plummet.
I spend more time with the dead in my mind then with the living. Right there behind the door observing my neighbor’s dark house, I sit, perched. My low spirits sinking lower. I rise, turn and make a beeline down the hallway, seeking solace in my bedroom and do not turn back around when for the second time I hear Ding Dong!
Fortunately for me, after that, the street became quiet. Halloween came to a close. After depriving the boy, and whatever child or children who rang the doorbell after him, I couldn’t bear to eat the M&M’s so I froze them in the fridge. I still visualize the boy’s dark hair. I imagine him who might or might not grow up to be an adult one day. I wonder if he will have a family of his own. Mostly, I wonder if he will grow up to be a person who distributes candy on Halloween.
Extending myself, and helping others were some of the best ways I knew to lift my spirits, and that’s what I spent doing for a good 35-year run. Then the day came when I couldn’t help one of the closest members of my family, and I, for the most part, retired my savior’s role.
I would like to end by saying, Next year I’ll give out candy on Halloween. And, maybe I will. Likely, I won’t. We heal and grieve and live our own way and in our own time. To me, this means giving myself the permission to be true to myself: sadness and dark “mood” included. I’m okay with that for today.
In fact, if someone used a magic wand to make my feelings and emotions associated with profound grief disappear, I would stop them. My destiny is as much a part of my makeup as my hazel blue eyes. I’m paving my way through the best I can, and I have faith that just because I feel the way I feel, I haven’t flunked life. In fact, by acknowledging my private feelings, I’m seeing myself as an honor student of life. I’m nowhere near the point of saying my life is a bag of sweets, but at least I still have a stash of M&M’s in the freezer, and if I see that dark-haired boy, because I do keep an eye out for him, I might just break open the loot to share with him.
Nearly a month ago, my neighbors’ only child, I’ll call her Felicity (one of my favorite names!), about whom I’ve written a previous blog post, relocated to attend a college about four hours away from home. I’ve not seen her mom, but her dad, as I’ve written about prior, is having a difficult time dealing with her departure.
All grief, as far as I am concerned, as I’ve also written about before, is valid. Whether you mourn the lose of a pet turtle or death of a child or grieve a child who has catapulted into the next stage of life, there is an infinite roll-out of feelings and emotions associated with a sense of loss. Grief is a natural response to a painful or traumatic experience that is part of the human condition over which we have no control over. This time, hearing my neighbor share a part of his heartbreak involving his daughter, I was able to step completely outside my personal emotional pain and maneuver my way onto the bridge that connects us humans better than Crazy Glue: empathy.
His tone had an absorbing melancholy when he discussed the slow fade of time. In other words, in retrospect, although you’re going all out, have both feet planted on the pedals, it’s a losing race.
“The house has a different energy about it without her,” he vocalized as his head tilted downward.
Energy. Yes, I thought, life is energy. In this same vein, his daughter’s departure could be a song: Felicity is packed. Ready to go. Boxes and bags, belongings and energy flow. All her belongings, only to leave us longing.
Thinking deeper about this, Felicity disappeared from her house, but not completely. You see, Biology 101 teaches us that the body’s cells and organs work together to keep the body going, to make it the energy field that it is. As a safeguard, the body is also equipped with many natural defenses to help it stay alive. For instance, in order to fight infections, we humans “lose 200,000,000 skin cells every hour. During a 24-hour period, a person loses almost five thousand million skin cells.” In one year, the total amount of dead skin loss per person is more than eight pounds, that’s about as big as a Labrador puppy.
The process is our human way of shedding. What falls off us collects as dust. All those fast-flying gossamer bunnies you find nesting in the corner of the radiator and on your tables and windowsills are amassed mostly of former bits of yourself, which, in turn, provide a gourmet haven for dust mites!
And, here’s the point I’m getting at. About 20 years ago, I heard a renowned historic preservation architect speak. If you don’t know already, a historic preservation architect helps preserve old buildings that have historical value. Anyway, he said that each time a building is demolished, not only do we witness an inanimate object disappear, but, along with it, is the annihilation of a trail in human history – thousands upon thousands of shredded cells from the lives that once laughed, loved and experienced the many highs and lows of life on the premises. The architect’s somber talk, which kept me on the edge of my seat and on the verge of tears, changed my life forever.
In my own house, built in 1980, after hearing the talk, I thought about the “remains” of the two families that lived here prior to us. Even though I am a germophobe, I know that they have left their marks in secret places that are spared from my cleaning habits. Sadly, the boy in the second family died in a horrific accident when he was 13. My children went to school with him and they always felt creeped out to know he lived in our home. His bedroom was where I once housed my office. His shreds of long-ago life filled me with faith and reminds me that he matters.
In essence, Felicity and her energy are gone, but her shredded skin still coats her house like angel dust. And this goes for my departed son, mom (my dad passed away before he ever could see our house), brother and my relocated daughter, our pets, and even ex-husband who lives in a state 600 miles away, not to mention all the many friends, extended family and acquaintances who have crossed my house’s threshold to visit over this 20-year span. Yes, they are all here somewhere in places invisible to the naked eye, but still close, like a whisper in my ear. Their remains peeled off during ebbs and flows in the tide of their lives. They are all part of my household history like my own skin that sheds at this very moment as I stroke my creative muse. We partner peacefully, drifting, weaving tapestries from everything repurposed, sustainable and with a thread of hope that they will last through the remainder of the century and, if possible, push farther into the next dusty trail that sometimes seems like a riverbend ahead.
WTF? (Where's the faith?) 