Someone said to me that in respects to the group I have attended, "We place no limit on Grief." It was also that same person who said to me that she could see that I had begun to integrate my pain. And what she said was valid, the pain of my losses weren't quite so readily visible on my sleeve as it had been in the beginning. However, while people around me couldn't see it, I on the other hand knew it still existed, it was the fact that the pain wasn't quite so intense. That is not to say that the pain doesn't still get intense, it does. Every once in a while something will remind me of my mother and it's as if I was right back to those first few days after she passed away. Thankfully those intense times don't last as long as they did in the beginning.
It is as if a thin veil has been placed over the hole that had been ripped through my heart. And while the veil is much like a scar that very veil is still too thin and can be torn at any given time. I don't know if the veil will ever sustain any amount of thickness to prevent it's occasional destruction in the wake of other life events that happen that remind me of the grief that still lives in my soul.
One of the things that however still surprises me is just how instense it can still get after 2, 3, and even 4 years. There were times when I began to feel guilty for still feeling it all so intensely after this length of time. It wasn't until I read a book recently that my guilt began to dissipate.
One of the many things that came to help me in my journey of grief was to read books, to find some semblance of not being totally isolated in the feelings that I was experiencing. And many books I did read in the beginning, but there came a point for a while where I wasn't interested in reading any more books about grief. One evening though I was at a local book store and was browsing when I came across a book that although was not related to the loss of a mother, it still got my attention. It was titled: "Journaling a Pathway Through Grief: One Family's Journey After the Death of a Child." Written by Wendy Dean, copyright 2002. No book up until this one had I read words where someone was speaking to my experience of my feelings of my grief. Dean writes so poignantly and eloquently what grief is really like. She shows grief in it's raw, painful reality. She wrote what I have been unable to write.
In this book she includes excerpts of the journal she has kept since the loss of her only daughter. There were parts that struck me deeply and I would like to share some of that here. Dean writes:
"As I discussed earlier, some contemporary grief therapists now seem
to recognize that grieving is much more complex, indiviualistic and
transformative process then previously understood. Worden for example,
has changed his last task of grieving from lossening ties to the deceased
to relocating the dead person in our lives and finding ways to memoralize
him or her. Acknowledging that we will never be 'over' the loss, Attig
suggests that we release our relationship with them by taking
self-transforming inspiration from their stories and appropriating their
cares and values as our own. In their writing and lectures to the bereaved,
Stephen Fleming and Paul Robertson also discuss the notion of legacy --
in terms of the wisdom gained from life lessons taught by the deceased,
lessons learned about loving, and how one is different from knowing and
loving the deceased. Similarly, Neimeyer presents and alternative narrative
perspective of grief and bereavement; his fundamental assumption is that
this struggle to reconstruct meaning is central to the grief experience.
Neimeyer also empahasizes that as we actively grieve and attempt to
reconstruct ourselves as survivors of loss.
Certainly, these more contemporary theorist identify issues that I recognize
from my own experience. For me, however, what continues to be largely
missing is a deep understanding of the soul's torment. Looking back at
these entries -- written three years after Rachel's death -- I am starkly
reminded of the paralysing, ongoing agony and my torturous struggle to
keep the flicker of my soul alight. No grief theory even comes close to
touching this crushing reality. The words of Lewis Smedes, himself a
bereaved father, come closest. In A Pretty Good Person , he writes:
"In that one chapter of our story, pain us in its claws, pin us down, tear
at our flesh and pierce our hearts.?
Moore understands that human suffering must be honored both as a
mystery and as a beast: It is a beast, this thing that stirs in the core
of her being, but it is also the star of her innermost nature," he writes.
"We care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that, in our
fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlook the star." Sue Mont
Kidd believes that waiting is one way to use crisis as an opportunity --
an approach that creates: "a painfully honest and contemplative
relationship with one's own depths, with God in the deep centres
of one's soul. People who choose this way are so much after peace
of mind or justice as wholeness and transformation. They are
after soul making."
Thus in January of 1997, I begin the process of waiting through the
long grat months of early winter. Against the worried urgings of
family, and friends, I again drop my course at OISE and decline
invitations to see people. In November, anticipating what lay ahead,
my dear friend Regina brought me watercolor pencils, paper and a
book of butterfly pictures. She gently encouraged me to choose one
butterfly each day, draw it and after contemplating, label and date it.
Submissively, passively, I did this -- without understanding the purpose
of the exercise. Only later did I appreciate the soul journey represented
in those drawings, done at a time when words were failing me.
January 14, 1997
I feel like I'm creeping along. Time has stopped.
I am waiting, waiting to feel the call to life again.
How I long to feel there is purpose, to believe
there is a reason for my being here when you're
not. I am so bored that I wonder why I don't
scream in sheer frustration and yet at the same
time, I have no energy to do anything, the interest
to engage. I don't recognize myself. I have
become everything I ever feared. Yet, the old
kickstarts don't work -- they fail to rouse me.
How much longer can I go on like this? Asleep
but only too awake.
The books suggest that at this stage, if one is having
"normal" grieving, you are beginning to integrate
the loss, find or rediscover purpose and meaning in
life, "let go" of the lost child and basically "get on,"
albeit changed and altered in significant ways. These
same books often go on to cite lived examples of
"resolved grief" verus, God frobid, "gettin stuck"
or equally terrrifying images of being in some limbo
land of unending pain. There is the subtle implication
that if the latter is the case, it's likely your fault.
Perhaps you have not sought appropriate professional
help or you have other unresolved issues that become
additional losses that must be dealt with in order to
become "healthy" again.
Where in all this clinicla verbiage is the awareness of
the soul? Indeed how does one begin to heal a soul
that feels broke, abused, felled? How to describe
life on a moodscape where all feelings are reduced
to shadows, where joy is a memory, where the daily
goal is comfort. I go to the card store to buy birthday
cards for a friend and my neice, apparently a simple
task. Although I try hard to avoid seeing, inevitably
my eye catches cards for daughters: "My cherished
daughter," "To my darling daughter," "Dearest Daughter,
Your my moon and stars." I recall how I loved chosing
cards for my Rach, the mushier the better, such a
chance to express adoration and thankfulness for her
amazing existence. I was always so astonished that
I had birthed such an incredible person! Once again I
confront the horror of her absence. Never again will
I choose such a card or receive one from her. I have
gone throught this scenario thirty, maybe forty times
