WYG Day 30

 WYG Day 30

Because I love me…

One of the things I have learned about in the last 30 days is that grief is not just about grief. It’s not just about the deep sadness that comes from losing a person who was important to you, a pet that was important to you, or a part of your life that is irreplaceable. It’s actually about love.

And actually that’s what life is about, right? Love. Even in death, there is love. There is love in how we react to our loved one’s death. Even in those first awful moments and weeks and months after, when we will our breath to cease, or at least maybe just let us not exist in this prickly, sticky, dark and deep world of grief. There is love to how we try to take who they are and make it a part of what we put out into the world. 

Toward the end of the month, I realized I was feeling lighter, and I was regarding myself with a lot less self loathing. My brain was still getting down on me for not doing the things I should have been doing while I was in depths of first grief, but that’s because my brain is broken and I am working on it. But I’ve been regarding those things that my brain says with less seriousness, with less Yes-I-need-to-not-be-so-lazy. It’s been a hard couple months, and it was hard to just exist and survive, let alone work and be a mom and a wife and a writer (although I did better with that last one than the other things). 

Having anxiety and a brain with a penchant for saying the most negative things about who I am is hard, and I am in therapy for it, and therapy is trying to help me learn to love myself. Learn to live with my anxiety in such a way that I don’t let it defeat me. And learning to love myself is one of the ways I can defeat anxiety. Actually, not defeat. Anxiety is like grief–some people just have anxiety that shows up one day and just stays forever. You can’t get rid of it. It’s a part of who you are. But you can learn to manage it.

And it’s similar to grief in the respect that it’s not something to get rid of, but something you learn to live with. I don’t know if you actually learn to manage grief. Grief is an altogether different animal.

I am going to continue to remember the things I have learned about grief and about love from this course. I think I am going to be okay–and it’s not because I was never going to be okay after this. Obviously I am a different person since the day of Sarah, Lula, and Tyler’s murder, in the same way I was a different person the day my father died, my mother died, Ryan broke my heart, Jeremy walked out on me, Jenni died, Scott made me believe I was a terrible human being and that I could never be worth anything to anyone, let alone as a friend. Each grief shattered me and I had to put myself back together.

The difference this time is that I didn’t let the way the world treat grief take me down. I didn’t try to get rid of it. I learned to understand more about it, and as I continue to grow with my grief, I know I will understand more about it. I will continue to love my friend and live her through me.

WYG Day 29

 WYG Day 29

Context: How do we write, as we are called to write, and bow with respect to the fact that death is at the core of this story? That this isn't a story at all?

How do you respond to this? What is the story of the story you're in?

I am 47 years old and I have been writing for about 4 decades. I had dreams of being a published writer, of seeing my words in my plays come alive on stage. And I still have those dreams. I struggle with my brain when I think about having written for about 40 years and have not a whole lot to show for it. I’ve been published, in newspapers, on websites and in print. But there’s not money that comes in for it, or rather, very little money that comes in for it. The idea of trying to make the leap to having an agent or submitting things to a publisher makes my anxiety spike. There’s not enough anti-anxiety meds in the world to make me deal with that. I don’t have a best seller anywhere; hell, I can’t even seem to finish a full draft and haven’t for years.

I mention these things, not because I want pity or whatever, but because those are the concrete things that people on the outside of being a writer see as ways to measure the success of a writer. In reality, just getting yourself to the page is a success. Just sitting in front of a blank piece of paper and actually spilling words on the page that assembles some kind of a story or an article or journal entry is an act of self love so seldom seen as such. But that isn’t something that really has value in our society; I can’t pay my mortgage with self love.

I am called to write. The call doesn’t specify what to write and how to do it and how to submit it to a publisher to create some kind of currency valued by our society. THe call just says write. So I do.

And there is a kind of holiness to writing, a hoaryness that comes from standing on the centuries of other writers who have come before, and of being in company of other writers, that comes from just answering that call.

And now I am called to write about grief and death.

It is obviously a hard call to answer. How do you write so that you don’t make the story seem trite? If you google how many books have been written about death, you aren’t going to get a large number (although, to be sure, there’s millions of them out there).

How do you write about an indescribable thing? Death is not something we can write about in terms of what happens after death, or even during death. We don’t have access to the thoughts of the deceased and of those around them when they go. We only have our experiences. 

And our experiences, generally, are going to be out of step with our culture and how our culture deals with death. It’s so clinical. So clean. And I understand, generally, why it has to be clinical and clean; there are sometimes diseases that could spread, and obviously we want to be careful. But I am talking beyond that.

Have you ever noticed how pristine and quiet funeral homes are? They are generally nicely furnished, beautiful buildings. They are so quiet. And I am sure that a lot of you would agree when you say that that seems out of step with our missing loved ones.

I went to a funeral for a nearly 2 year old who died of cancer. It was a sad situation for sure; I had been lucky enough to meet the little girl once; she had been born just before the pandemic and hadn’t met a lot of people except for those outside the hospital. I got a side eye from the beautiful blonde girl and I still treasure that side eye to this day. The day she died was a dark day indeed.

And as I stood in the funeral home, looking at the pictures of this family, and saw the loved ones gathered, speaking in low voices, Evee’s little pink car near her casket, with a wreath of flowers on it, I couldn’t help but think this was all wrong. Not that her family did anything wrong; clearly each funeral should be as individual as the person who died. But I felt that the core of who Evee was wasn’t being represented. I hope that if Evee’s family sees this, they don’t think less of me. I just felt that a joyous celebration of who she had been would have suited me better.

And this might not work for other people, but it seems to me that funerals in general don’t capture who the deceased was so this was not only a problem I saw for Evee’s funeral. It’s a problem I see in general. I know people are sad. I know people are in the midst of holding up that boulder of grief, and attempting to not let it crush them. I get it. So maybe laughter and joy aren’t what should happen. But something different needs to happen.

And that’s where I’m going with this. I feel like the approach to death in writing is often from a clinical and clean point of view; like I said, nothing wrong with that, but I feel like, at least for myself as a writer, it’s more than just clinical and clean. Like the way that our culture handles grief, as a disease that needs to go away, it seems to me that funerals and writing about death need something missing: the deceased. Who was this person? In my case with Sarah, Lula and Tyler, who were these people who were so senselessly murdered? There will not be a happy ending. There will not be a neat bow at the end. There will be masses of flowers that look pretty, but in the end, what happens?

How do you write the unwriteable?

You look at your grief, the lumpy, sharp, sometimes too squishy, sometimes too deep, sometimes a mountain to scale, sometimes a sea to drown in, and you see the negative invisible space of the person lost. You find that love. And that’s how you write–you just do it, with love.

WYG Day 17: Grief is Everywhere

    There is something interesting about doing these prompts out of numerical order–due to my work schedule, the kids’s schedule and everything else going on, I have had to do these in a different order. And I know that this particular day’s prompt had a piece to listen to, and for some reason (anxiety, my brain being an asshole, etc.), I just drug my feet on this one.

And the part from The Grief Experiment audiobook probably wouldn’t have been as helpful then as it is now. I’ve experienced a softening, a loosening of grief; I feel like I have less of a white knuckled grip on it than I did 30 days ago. Is this because time passed and it would have naturally happened? 

Possible, but I think that this course has helped me with that.

Because grief is everywhere, and it always will be, for the hundreds of griefs that live within me, and I can’t have a white knuckle, sobbing on the floor reaction to each one of them every moment of the rest of my life. There’s nothing wrong with that initial reaction; I hope that doesn’t sound like I’m saying that. Emotions and reactions are just what they are, and there is nothing wrong with what they are. I just can’t physically or mentally continue to exist this way.

I took a walk on what was probably the last nice 70 degree day of the year. I went to my kids’ elementary school and did two laps around the building before I got the kids their drinks and my crocheting and sat on my usual bench on the playground and waited for my kids to be dismissed and the other moms (including our friend, Ken) came along. And while I was taking that walk, I noticed Sarah’s tree had been planted.

I was not unaware of this; Tabitha told me that the tree was planted on the big kids’ playground and that they were told to not touch the notes written on it. I am going to have to investigate the notes one of these days before the elements get too far into them, and take pictures for myself. I also thought as I made the second round that I should decorate it for Christmas. So I was prepared for this.

What I was not prepared for was seeing the expanse that grief had made in my life. That there were literally missing spots where the living once stood; and some of those missing spots were occupied by people who still live but I wish I had never laid eyes on; some of my grief subjects still live and in at least one case, that’s unfortunate. But that’s for another day (maybe).

In art, there is this idea of negative space, which is the space between the subject(s) in the image (thanks wikipedia for the refresher). In grief, there is also a negative space. And this is not negative as in bad. It’s just a descriptor of the space–it’s the space that’s unoccupied by the subject(s) in the picture.

I have experienced this negative space in grief. I tried to hold on tight to it, for fear that I might drop off the planet, or lose my memories of my friend. But once I got to a certain point and love relaxed my grief, I didn’t have to worry I would drop off the planet or lose the memories of my friend. They are still here, and I am still on the planet.

WYG Day 25: Grief Poety

Context: Read this poem and write immediately after your reaction.

Happiness grows back

Like saplings after a forest fire

Barren grief

No longer your primary

residence

That old hollowness

Carved out

Washed

With holy tears

An old topography of loss

You will follow

Back to life

My immediate reaction is, what the fuck?

This was clearly written by someone who maybe is trying to help someone feel better, trying to comfort them, and just doesn’t get it. This poem has some interesting parts to it, ‘barren grief’, in particular is an interesting turn of phrase, but in my experience, grief doesn’t feel barren. It feels like it’s a pregnant moment full of emotions that are ready to explode, particularly in the first days after the event happens. 

The mention of ‘holy tears’ is particularly grating. There definitely is a holiness in grief–even for those who don’t subscribe to a religion or spirituality. Something about it feels otherworldly and hoary, and it needs to be honored. But I doubt that’s what they meant by holy tears.

And the ‘old topography of loss’ phrase is a nice one. I like that loss has a topography and a map, and it’s a thing you explore in the first days onward of your grief. But it’s not a map to follow out of grief. Grief is always going to be there. Happiness can be there too, even if our culture has a serious hard on separating the two. 

There’s a lot that is trite about it, that feels very much like a greeting card, that doesn’t really help in any situation. It might make the person writing the poem or sending a card with it on it to someone who is grieving, feel better. But in the end, I would be super angry that someone killed a tree for this particular set of words and I would be upset to receive it, because it’s the opposite of what I would need and want.

WYG Day 24: Going Deeper

    There has definitely been a shift that has happened inside me and my grief in the last week or so (whatever, time has lost meaning–and I don’t mean this because of the murder of my friend, her husband and daughter that time is warped–it most certainly is–but I mean that prior to this, I had no sense of time. I understood time, but I still feel like it’s a construct, even more so now). So this could have happened yesterday, or three days ago, or whatever, because I just can’t with time.

Anyway, I felt a deeper drop into my grief, but without extra pain exactly. It’s more like grief was hogging the couch and just moved over so I could take a seat and now we are sitting comfortably with each other. We’re not exactly enjoying each other’s companionship, but we are also not hating it. I mean, if we have to be stuck together now, we might as well figure out who the other one is and figure out how to live together since we will be.

And yes, the pain has felt gentler somehow. One way it’s felt gentler is that when I hear about another murder that has happened (like the family that was murdered in California), I not only immediately can feel the pain of their family and loved ones left behind, but my heart feels more open to them. Like, even though I am in Iowa, and they are in California, I feel like I am making space for them, even though they don’t know it. I hope they can feel it. I don’t want to be this weirdo who contacts them and is like, hey, I see you and I get you, but maybe I will be. And maybe I can be more gentle to that impulse and not say that I am a weirdo for doing it. 

Writing my post for Day 16 has felt like a huge release, and that there’s more coming from that. This was the post that I wrote about being tired as a mom. I thought I was coming into this with just one kind of grief, the one recent thing that shook my world, but the very first day, I ended up writing a list of griefs that I have, and that list has somehow gotten longer and has been explored more. 

I was driving home from work the other night (again, fuck time because what is it even?) and I realized that I was not sunk to the seat sad. I was looking at the colors of autumn, and I wasn't feeling sad because Sarah isn’t here to miss it. Okay, maybe that isn’t right–maybe it's that I'm not feeling depressed because she’s not here to see them. It almost seemed like the colors are a little brighter and are lasting a little longer, and maybe it’s because of her? I don’t know, but I like the idea that Sarah budged in and is taking over the coloring of the leaves and is making it last longer to let us know…she misses us? That it’s okay to feel whatever we are feeling?

I was taking to my therapist on Monday, and we had a conversation about how, because of Sarah, Tyler and Lula being murdered, I can’t watch Criminal Minds anymore (honestly, it’s okay because without Mandy Patakin, all the episodes after he left were kind of meh anyway). I had a psychological interest here and there to understand human behavior when it came to serial killers, but I wasn’t one of those people who listen to murder podcasts and think serial killers are sexy. After what I have been through, I cannot. 

And then my friend, Keidra, brought up the same subject yesterday, and she confirmed that my feelings were valid about this by talking about how her husband pointed out that if someone says that ‘if they get killed by a serial killer, they hope it’s someone as hot as bundy’ is just a fucked up thing to think and say, and I agree. And so did she. But it was nice to have this kind of validation.

I am fully expecting to shift back into pain at some point. Birthdays, anniversaries, they all show up. But I hope that by having this shift into grace and openness and love that I can help myself in those times. And that I can help others too.

WYG Day 23: How Would You Love Me?

    If Sarah was still here and I was going through the same kind of grief, she would be exactly the kind of friend I would need at this time. She isn’t the kind of person who subscribes to platitudes and religious garbage like ‘God wouldn’t give you more than you can handle’. 

She would want to meet me for coffee and donuts, and chat about whatever needed to be talked about. She would listen with an open mind, open heart, and open arms.

That’s because that was the kind of person Sarah was. She would suggest going for a walk or a hike, and because I am not super outdoorsy, I would probably choose a walk. We would go down by the river, or maybe walk the trails by the Hearst Center for the Arts. If we went down by the river, we would stop in the newest park area we have built in our town and we would admire the new sculpture, ‘dream house’. Sarah would have definitely loved that sculpture. I would imagine that we would probably stop to take some silly selfies.

And if I didn’t feel like talking at all, we would stop and sit on a bench, watching the river go by.

And I would feel like I was seen and cared for, which is funny, because through this program I have felt seen and cared for and I have learned to love myself the way that Sarah would have loved me through this. Ironic, isn’t it that Sarah’s murder brought me to the place where I would have felt the most love and cared for during the aftermath of her murder?

And we would eventually laugh and things would feel better, if even just for a moment.

Day 22: What Comes Next?

Write in the Voice of Your Loved One

Dear Toni,

You need to know that this was not your fault. I was an adult with a problem, and you were a child when I died. How could you be responsible for this? You couldn’t.

I know your mother felt like you blamed her for my death, and it wasn’t her fault either. There was not a single person who could have pulled me from this. I am an alcoholic and when my brother, Bill, died, I felt like a piece of me died with him.

Without him, I saw nothing left in the world for me. Not that you and your mother weren’t reason enough to stay. I was sick. And when he went, it was just over. I can’t explain it, except to say that I was sick and it wasn’t your fault.

I was always so proud of you. You always were so creative and smart and funny, and from the years that have passed since I died, I can see that you have done so much with what you were given as gifts. I know you sometimes don’t feel like you have done enough. Sweetie, this world is hard, and there’s only so much you can do when you are only one person. You have used your creativity to stay alive, and that was a lot more than I ever did.

And you also did something I saw that your mother never did; you got help when you needed it for your mental health problems. You are not nearly as sick as she was, and I know you are still afraid after all these years that you are going to end up with the same kind of mental health issues your mother had. But you don’t. And I don’t think you will.

I don’t know how you ended up with me and your mom as your parents and somehow came out of all the things that happened to you as a kid, some of which your mother caused, said and did. I am happy you were my daughter, but at the same time I wish you had been given to someone else. You would have been better off.

I also saw what you had to go through with your mother when you were in college and I am sorry you had to go through that. I saw you struggle to make the decision you made, and you made the right decision. She should never have asked you to quit school to take care of her, especially when she had another daughter who was doing nothing with her life, not even school or a job, who could have helped care for her. But you considered it. And that is how I know that you are a good person; someone else who was terrible would have just said no outright. You thought about it. You agonized over it. You wrote a beautiful ten minute play and a beautiful full length play about it.

I also saw you struggle with her death. I saw that you were scared that she would be eventually waiting for you when you died to scream at you. I see that you don’t even know how you believe as far as an afterlife goes, and you still fervently believe this is possible.

You are a good mother. You struggle with it, but those kids are so lucky to have you as their mother. They both remind me so much of you as a kid; Tabitha is so sweet and tenderhearted and cries at the death of a bug on a windshield; Orson is wild and loud and fun like you were as a kid. They are good kids, smart, beautiful and amazing.

I love you. I loved being your dad, even when I wished you didn’t have to deal with our shit. I loved going to the library with you, even if it was just an excuse to drink in secret. I loved your excitement for reading and writing and creativity, and I love that something good came from my life.

Love,

Daddy

Day 16: What is the Condition of Your Heart?

I am a few days behind on writing as usual, but I am particularly behind on a couple that required a bit of thought before they came to me. And I realized today, the condition of my heart, and my whole being all the way down to my very soul is that I am tired.

Honestly I think I have been tired since I became a mom. I wasn’t aware of what kind of tiredness was waiting for me when I became a mom. I have felt slightly bitter about being a mom. It’s not that I don’t love my kids–I would obviously die for them. I love them so much, and I would do it again because they are wonderful little people who are turning into amazing big people who will help save this world. But I understand why some people just don’t want kids. I wasn’t aware of how much work it would be, and even beyond that, I was not aware of how much your heart could break becoming a mom and trying to be even just an average mom, let alone the best mom.

I feel like my kids are going to read this someday and they are going to feel bad about it. They might even be angry. But I have to write the truth about what is happening to me.

It’s been 8 years since they came along, and the last 8 years have been full of contradictions: I love them, but I don’t always like them (the feeling, believe me, is definitely mutual). We have raised them to know that family are people you always love, but you don’t always like them. Like, with my mom, I love her, but I didn’t like her, so I had to end our relationship. Same with us. We love each other, but we might not always like each other. And when it comes down to it, if one of us is being toxic to the other, I would hope that they would be able to have boundaries that are strong enough to do what needs to be done to save themselves.

Tears and laughter–especially lately. Tabitha made me fall over laughing just this morning talking about how there’s another color in the rainbow that she needs to put on her rainbow to make it right, info red (infrared). I felt bad laughing, but it was so unexpected. Orson made me cry last week a lot by just ignoring me, sassing me, and just plain not listening and being a jerk about it. 

The amount of time I spend doing things for them just seems to be unappreciated in a lot of ways. One of the reasons I was crying was because I was just tired of doing everything in the house. I get up, I clean, I do laundry, I fold laundry, I hang up laundry, I pick up things that aren’t even mine and put them away. I think I might understand why my mom was so crazy sometimes–I can understand what she was going through as someone who constantly did everything for me. The difference was, she wouldn’t let me do anything because she thought I couldn’t do it the right way–her way. I try not to do that, but it’s hard.

And then when Sarah, Lula and Tyler were murdered, it just added an aspect of tired I wasn’t expecting. I have spent the better part of the last almost three months since they were murdered thinking and feeling and experiencing grief and i am just tired. I am tired of being sad. I am tired of feeling misunderstood for my grief. Adding this to the tiredness I already was feeling for being a mom, it just kind of broke me.

So how do I feel seeing and bearing the condition of my heart? I hope I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings with it. I didn’t write anything I wrote here because I don’t love my family. I love them with all my heart. The reality is that what the world asks of mothers is so similar to how the world views grief–there’s a certain way you should act, and if you don’t do the things expected, in the way you are expected to do them, and you don’t experience them that way, well, you are clearly doing it wrong.

What I need to do is actually start taking better care of myself. Even when the house is a mess, and the kids haven’t put their clothes away, I need to just do something for me. I am taking a mixed media class at our local art center, so this is the first one I am going to do, just for me. If anything, all this tiredness tells me I need to recharge myself to be worth anything for anyone else.

Day 21

 WYG Day 21

I remember…

I used a noun generator to come up with an ordinary word to write a Natalie Goldberg style ‘I Remember’ writing piece. The word the generator gave me is ‘shock’.

I remember the orange plastic pumpkins lit from within with incandescent lights. The pumpkins had black eyes and a missing toothed black smile, and I remember when I would touch them, I would get shocked. Electricity surgered in a spark from the pumpkin to my small hand and I shrieked. My mother chastised me for touching the pumpkin because I could get hurt. And I got a shock. And I spent the next few Halloweens looking at those pumpkins from the ugly floral 70s couch or from the scratchy orange rug, and I would glare at them, wishing I could get closer to them. They were beautiful and I wanted to be close to their beauty, but I couldn’t without pain.

I remember hearing about the Challenger explosion. I was in school, but for some reason, we were the only class not watching the broadcast. It wasn’t until later that I saw what had happened. I recall standing upstairs in my room, the television on, the footage of the explosion on the screen, feeling rooted to the spot I stood in, shocked that this could happen. There was a teacher on board. My teacher could have been on board. How do things like this happen in the world?

I remember when we were in the hospital for the last time with my father. There was a code on the Critical Care floor where my father was, and I knew which room he was in. That was the room they called the Code Blue for. We were in the cafeteria and even though the Critical Care staff bent the rules for me to be on the floor even though I wasn’t old enough, I was directed to go to the waiting area on the floor as staff and equipment and my mother went to the room. My aunt was there and she was in the room for a moment when I entered and I started to cry. She grabbed me by the shoulders, not to hug me, but to shake me back to reality. “You need to be strong for your mom,” she said and then left the room. I stood there, shocked, and I stopped crying right away.

I remember being in high school, having my first real boyfriend, Ron. We met in a math class that I nearly failed (it wasn’t because he was there, but it didn’t help). We started dating not long after we met, and I remembered one time in the hall before one of our classes. We were hanging out talking about some actress I think who was really beautiful and really sexy. I recall declaring that I would rather be known for being smart than being hot and stupid, and my boyfriend snorted and said that it was a good thing because I definitely was not hot. And it shocked me that he said this. It hurt my heart that someone who claimed to love me would say something like that. I was so shocked that I could barely say anything, and I walked off quickly, tears in my eyes. He apologized later, and then I found out at some point that he was cheating on me with his ex-girlfriend, and I was not surprised by this fact. Angry, but not shocked.

I remember just before going to college at the University of Iowa and I was dating a guy who was just perfect for me, or at least I thought he was. He was older, he was an actor, he was a writer who had gone to the writer’s workshop at Iowa. He was funny and encouraged me as a writer and I fell really hard for him. There were so many times I wanted to confess that I loved him, but I just didn’t. I didn’t want to be the first one, because then it wouldn’t mean as much, right? Girls aren’t supposed to say it first. I knew that was stupid, but I felt that deep down inside I was not special enough to be worthy of him. I was living in the dorms and I had spent the day out with my friends seeing the new Harry Potter movie and shopping, and I had to take a shower before he came over. I came out of the shared bathroom on our floor and saw him sitting on the floor outside my room, his head bowed on his knees. I smiled and greeted him and he stood up and we went into my room. In my excitement about seeing him, I started to take my robe off and then he told me that he needed to break up with me because he didn’t love me and he knew that I was in love with him. I put my robe back on, and tied it, and tried to lie my way out of him breaking up with me, but it didn’t work. He then invited me to come and stay with him that night for the last time, and I asked him to leave.

I remember needing help to get pregnant. Bill and I tried for longer than we needed to, and then we went to the doctor and got all kinds of tests and found out that we were going to need help. I was so shocked and broken. We went ahead with clomid and with an IUI. The techs told us that the procedure wouldn’t work but we would try anyway. I had the shock of my life when my period didn’t start, and I took a pregnancy test on Thanksgiving Day and it was positive. A week and a half later, I found out I was having twins.

WYG Day 20: Shifting Sands of Grief

Context: What does a shift in your grief, even a tiny, momentary one, mean to you? What does it say about loss? Or Love?

You know how it is when you see something everyday and then one day you look at it, and you think, wait, did that always look like that?

That’s a good way to describe how a shift in my grief feels.

It’s like seeing a co-worker every day and only noticing that they got a new hair style or cut after they have had it for a few days.

After I found out about Sarah, Tyler and Lula, and until just after the celebration of life, I had a painful awareness of my grief. It was stuck in my soul like a splinter–raw, painful, and with varying degrees of pain and soreness depending on whether the splinter was bumped or not.

Until one day, I realized I wasn’t thinking about it constantly. The ache, the pain, the rawness went away, and I don’t know how long it was gone, but as soon as I realized it was gone, it was back, with its bratty little sibling, guilt.

How could I forget, for even a moment, the pain of this loss?

How could I be happy, for even a moment, when Sarah, Lula and Tyler are dead?

How could I not be wailing on the floor, beating my chest and renting my clothes (like my guilt EVEN knows what those things are!), when Arlo is now without his parents and sister?

Even typing this out is ridiculous.

Of course I can not think about it–why should I have to dwell on this terrible thing that has happened? Why can’t I allow myself a moment of happiness? A moment reprieve from the burning sadness? How could I berate myself for this?

It’s almost like the way our world works. It's expected that not only will we not forget their memory, but somehow we have to get over it too. I’m not sure how those two things are supposed to work together.

But I do feel guilt for not thinking about it all the time. I do feel like maybe I am not doing enough for their memory if I don’t think about them all the time. After all, one of the things we like to placate grief with is telling people that the person we lost will be alive forever in our memory. If that’s true, what happens when we are not actively experiencing grief anymore? What happens when it loses its intensity? What happens if we start to smile again, in spite of our grief?

Are we expected to wear mourning colors forever and sit in sadness our whole lives?

A shift in grief is not a bad thing. In my experience, particularly with old old grief, a shift in grief doesn’t mean that we don’t love the person we lost. It doesn’t mean that we have forgotten about them or don’t honor their memory. A shift in grief feels natural because in a lot of ways, our psyches can only hold grief so close, particularly when it’s a burning iron of grief, before we really get burnt badly. It’s a protective measure for our relationship to shift with grief.

Just because our relationship with grief changes doesn’t mean we have forgotten the missing person in our lives. It doesn’t mean we don’t love them. It has to change.

Because long term, we cannot survive with such an attitude toward grief.

My mother and I obviously went through grief when my father died. I didn’t get over it, exactly, but I realized that the best way to honor my dad was to try and live my life the way he would have wanted me to, and to live up to my potential. Maybe it’s because I was nearly 12 when it happened and my mom was an adult, but it seems like she never moved past the painful burning stage of grief.

She held the red hot poker of loss for so long that I don’t think she could even think of how to let go of it, for fear she would lose…everything. So she stayed angry and bitter, and it made it hard for anyone to get close to her.

I hope that I can leave room in my life for grief. I would hate to end up like my mother.

WYG Day 18 A Blessing

 WYG Day 18

 A Blessing

For Arlo

First the sort of bad news. May you know that this place you are in, this strange place that might feel like a nightmare is, really, as bad as it feels. I am not saying this to make you feel worse; not sure that’s a thing or a place that exists. 

I say sort of bad news because this is a bad bad thing that happened. There is absolutely nothing I can say or do, or that anyone can say or do, that will make this less bad.

But there is still love here for you, in this strange new world you exist in.

The love that your mother, father and sister have for you is still here. It’s all around you. And I know it’s hard to believe that, or understand how it’s possible. But you don’t need to understand it. Because there is no understanding where you are. There is, however, love to hold you in this strange place, to give you some comfort.

May you remember all the good times you had with your mother, father and sister. May those memories comfort you when you need it.

And when it feels like there is no comfort to be had, may you feel  what you are feeling. Just be in the moment with your grief. Cry if you need to. Reach out for someone if you need them. If you need to be alone, know that is okay too.

May you know that there people out here for you. We might not understand what is going on for you in this strange new land, but we see you and we honor you.

You have seen and experienced things that no one should, let alone someone so young. But you have seen and experienced these things. And we see you and we honor you.

May you someday be able to dwell with your grief.

You are loved, Arlo. You are loved.

WYG Day 19: Memory

    I want to remember seeing you for the first time. We were at the library, the very one you would be working for when you were on vacation and were murdered. I remember seeing your amazing dark blonde curls, and Arlo with his sweet bouncy curls and Lula with her stick straight hair and her expressions that made me laugh so much. I remember us both walking quickly around the library, chasing a stray child; we smiled at each other as we passed by each other. Finally we were near the playhouse, and the kids were happily playing in there, and we had a moment to talk. I took a chance and gave you one of my playwright business cards. And that is how our friendship started.

I want to forget the moment when Kiedra messaged me at work and the first thing I saw about your murder was her saying “I thought you knew her”. Frantically, I logged into my laptop and the first thing I saw was the library posting that they would be closed the next day due to the death of a colleague. And then I saw Keidra’s message, and then it was, ‘No, no, no, no. no!” as I pulled up the news and saw it. I had seen earlier in the day that the murders that had happened at Maquoketa Caves Camping Area were of three people from the same family from Cedar Falls. It bothered me, but I soon was at work where I was absorbed in what I was doing. And then I was chanting ‘no, no, no. no’ and then I was crying when I saw the names: Sarah, Tyler and their six year old daughter, Lula. I want to forget the moment that I felt the world ripped apart and suddenly knew what an out of the ordinary horror felt like.

I want to remember standing with you almost every day after school on the playground to pick up the kids from school. I want to remember laughing and being annoyed by having to be there, but I actually really enjoyed it because it was my time to spend with friends while my kids got their crazies out. We would talk about what our plans were for upcoming weekends and holidays. I want to remember going to Hurts Donuts on opening day. I want to remember going to Cottonwood Canyon. 

I want to forget that I will never see my friend again. That thought is so terrible I just can’t deal with it. I saw her during the week before the camping trip at the library. My kids were running amok and I escaped the kids’ section in order to talk to my friend. We discussed upcoming plans since summer was basically over. She mentioned going camping to the caves and I ended up leaving not long after, waving goodbye to her as I ran after the kids. I waved goodbye for the last time and I didn’t even know it was the last time.

I want to remember her excitement about her job at the library. I want to remember doing the macrame class that she was the library staff member for. I want to remember that she was so proud of organizing so much of the summer library program. I want to remember her love for her kids and the outdoors.

I want to forget seeing what the cause of death was for her, Lula and Tyler. I don’t want to repeat it here because it’s bad enough that it’s in my brain. It wasn’t the worst possible thing that could have happened in the big picture, but it was pretty terrible because it was exactly what I had envisioned and had hoped was not what happened. I want to forget being so angry with the shooter. I want to forget being so angry at the shooter’s mom who said that she was convinced that her son would never do something like that (which is normal for a mom to say after something like this) but I almost lost it when she said that Arlo told them that the man shooting at his family was in green and her son was wearing black (Arlo happened to run straight to the shooter’s mom as they were camping not far from where his family was). Additionally, she claimed they had only one gun with them and it was locked up, and then he ended up using a ghost gun to kill my friend, her husband and their daughter–and his mother claimed he had lost his fascination with guns and was using their gun for protection. I now understand that she was probably in denial as she had lost someone she loved as well, but I don’t see how she could muddy the waters of what had happened with this crap. I wanted to drive to Nebraska and give her a piece of my mind. 

I want to remember the bittersweet joy that came from the celebration of life. Working on the blanket I am still crocheting, crocheting for the first time since my kids were born over 8 years ago. This helped comfort me and kept my anxiety to a minimum. I sat among the members of our Lincoln Elementary family, next to my friend, Jessica. She laughed later when I told her I didn’t have any kleenex with me and she said she should have shared hers. We talked to people after the celebration was over, and we ended up walking the tree back to our friend, Shannon’s, car to take the tree to Jessica’s house for safe keeping for the rest of the summer. The laughter and joy we felt walking along with a tree in a pot made me feel like Sarah was with us, and laughing wherever she is now.

I want to forget the lump I felt in my throat on the first day of school when Sarah wasn’t there, and I didn’t want to go home right away or be alone, so I drove around the cemetery I knew Sarah, Lula and Tyler were buried in, attempting to find their graves. The graves were not listed online yet and I didn’t want to ask the family where I could find their graves, so I thought, I will drive around until I find them. I felt so silly–do you know how many fresh graves there can be in a medium sized cemetery? A lot, that’s how many. Plus the grounds guys were working on things, and I just didn’t want to be a bother or look like a weirdo, so I went home. I know Sarah was laughing, again, wherever she is now.

I want to remember seeing Arlo for the first time since the deaths of his mother, father and sister, and the relief I felt that he looked okay. He was with his grandmother, and he looked taller, a bit older, but like any other kid walking into school on backpack night. I said hello to him but I knew he didn’t recognize me with my mask on, and even without he might not have. But I was glad to see that he appeared okay.

I want to forget about what Arlo might have experienced and seen. Nothing more besides the causes of deaths was released from the police report. There was nothing released about how Arlo was able to survive and what he experienced. I want to forget that he was observed being alone with the police, standing there, no one taking care of him. The thought of him having survived what he survived, seeing what he had seen, and then there was no one there holding his hand or comforting him, that just hurt so much.

I want to forget that I realized I didn’t see Lula at backpack night. I want to forget her birthday sneaking up on me.

I do want to remember who Sarah, Lula and Tyler were. I want to remember their love for each other. I want to remember that they left the world a better place when they were taken all too soon from us. I want to remember Arlo is still here,, a piece of Sarah and Tyler’s hearts still up and walking around. And that his heart is probably quite quite broken. I hope that he is getting the help he needs. I hope he knows he was loved.