Looking Back..

I tell about my personal pain not because I feel somehow special or different, but because of my belief that in examining any one human story a greater truth can be gleaned. We all struggle with death, loss, that path that turns one way and not the other. My story is your story, just change the names, alter some details.

I am drained. I meant to write more about the CO’s…but Friday my eldest would have been 37 and grief has taken over me. I will admit to a change in my grief, hard to define and describe. It will never not be there, but the rawness of it has ebbed some. I still cry, fret that as he crawled on his hands and knees along the city streets looking for the help that came to late, he felt he died alone… that I did not care or love him. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Your first born has a quality about the experience, the births after it no less loved or precious, that is so intense. Every choice you make as a parent, every new thing your child does is so wonderful, so full of import. The circumstances around my first born heightened that time, the 60 are a crucible of American societal change. Being one of the world’s smartest 15 year olds certainly helped;-p. His father had just been drafted, my home life was one of abuse, I was young and in love ,surely all the terrible things adults told me were bound to happen would not happen to me~ I was infallible after all. I bravely or stubbornly, depending on your viewpoint, decided to reject the abortion offered by my Doctor, marry my love and we would strike out on our own. When that child was first placed in my arms the feeling was the best I had ever had and I knew that come what may I had made the right choice. He was my doppelganger~ the common face and voice, temperament, and in the years before the end, he showed me what I could have become had I not made the choices I did.

He had made the kinds of choices I never could~ living for only himself, lying, self-sabotage, and the biggie~ avoiding knowing himself. He was a semi grown man, 30, when the last terrible thing went down between us late one night. A physical fight, he began to hit and I retreated behind my bedroom door, he began breaking of many of my possessions, from family heirlooms to all my appliances having their cords cut. Finally his anger spent he went to sleep; I gathered a few things, my youngest and fled to my SO’s. That day I knew I had to try a last resort tactic~ He had to go in no uncertain terms, be told to never darken my door until he could look me in the eye and say, “I am a man, a good man”. How strong we Mothers must be at times, for that would take all my inner strength to do~ deny my own. It is still a decision I struggle with, even though that morning he died sober, working and a man, a good one. We had not made up, said I love you even though I tried repeatedly to reach out to him. A male friend who knew us both explained to me that a son could imagine doing nothing worse to his Mother than mine had done to me… how could those boys of ours not know how much we love them? That even this was not enough to stop those ties?

So after the horror of the phone call telling me he had died, I was left with this mess. I like to think it was the right thing to do, but can never really know. He was sober, so he felt every pain of his heart ceasing~ is that a good thing? I can only hope so.

All of my friends rushed to me, trying to help with the un-helpable. They defended me from myself, my guilt, blocked my self-hatred for what I had done for a good reason. Moreover, I think I could only deal with bits and pieces of this event, my mind refusing to take it all in because that way madness lies. I was on one level at peace with it, I believe that things happen as they should~ for reasons beyond my ken~ and that we know on some level how deep our love goes for each other. I never dealt though with the aspect of us not speaking with each other. At times it has made me feel cruel, heartless, some kind of monster. At other times, I think it was the most self-sacrificing act of my life~ to forget my hearts ease in order to try save him from himself. Then just those few months later Kelsey, my hearts angel, went to look for his brother…

Now on this day that should have been full of cake, presents and happiness I find I have more work still to do on this endless path of sorrow. I never let myself fully grieve for my eldest, and then was simply overwhelmed with the death that seemed to surround me. It’s ironic I have faced my own demise but never really thought this would happen~ that I would live beyond my children. I imagine most parents do not~ it is my fervent wish that fewer and fewer parents will have to. Peace.

The words to the poem in the picture follow:

Grief

by Gwen Flowers

I had my own notion of grief.
I thought it was the sad time
That followed the death of someone you love.
And you had to push through it
To get to the other side.
But I’m learning there is no other side.
There is no pushing through.
But rather,
There is absorption.
Adjustment.
Acceptance.
And grief is not something you complete,
But rather, you endure.
Grief is not a task to finish
And move on,
But an element of yourself-
An alteration of your being.
A new way of seeing.
A new definition of self.