Diary of Grief

Notes from Week Three: 8/8 - 8/14

I visited my therapist this week, a woman who has suffered more losses than many. She speaks of grief as an ocean wave. When you’re at the beach, she says, observe the pattern of the waves. I get her meaning. Grief seems to pull back a little, at times, giving relief, then breaks on the shore of your soul again, without mercy, when you least expect it.

A few days later, C and I are strolling barefooted along Pismo Beach, the children running in three separate directions across the vast expanse of sand. I have the peculiar sense that I am looking at the sky for the first time; it feels boundless and encompassing at the same time; so blue, so wide and so good. My breathing is easier in the salty air. And my heart feels freer, lighter, lifted somehow. Riding a gentle crest of the wave, perhaps.

On the beach, thoughts of Steve surface readily, since my fondest memories come from the beach house our families rented together all those summers. A memory plays: Steve and I are tanning on the beach, his skateboard propped in the sand near his head, the boom box playing George Michael. Another: Steve gliding flawlessly across the ocean shores on his skim board. The memories don’t gnaw too deeply, but instead seem to nibble at the edges of me, leaving me pensive as I walk the shores alone for a while, watching determined pelicans swoop down across the ocean’s surface, looking to satisfy a compelling hunger.

The next morning, at the hotel’s continental breakfast bar, a preteen, skater kid helps my six year old with his too-heavy tray; and for a second, the kid is Steve. It’s him twenty-four years ago, back in our skater days – his skater bangs, his skater Vans. There, at the table, with the bagels and Cocoa Puffs, I slip into a whirlpool of sadness. And it hurts all over again. The loss cuts across my heart at sharp, acute, angles.

Then: wild sobbing.

Just like that the wave has come. The wave has come, and crashed hard.

-------------------------

Later, after a trip into town for clam chowder, C takes the boys to the game deck, giving me some alone time with my laptop. At the desk in the hotel room, I write this poem:

Seeing

Sometimes, when

someone dies, you

start seeing them

everywhere—

their face suddenly

in every crowd.

You are

in a crab shack,

in Pismo;

he’s in line

in front of you –

his profile,

his hair.

And for

a split

of a split second,

you’re in a world

where this is possible;

where he isn’t gone;

where it’s all been

a universe of dream.

You’re in a world

where you can

touch him

on the shoulder,

where you can

embrace him

the way

you’ve so

desperately

been needing

to do.

Diary of Grief: Notes from Week Two

Today, grief meant polishing off a one pound bag of peanut M&Ms, while driving in the minivan. I just kept reaching for more, with a robotic compulsion, that could, in retrospect, almost be considered comical: because I think I looked like a rodent shoving nuts into its cheeks, real fast-like. Anyhow, I got lost trying to find Wolf Camera, which I’ve been to a zillion times. The brain, on grief, doesn’t function as it should. I felt almost desperate in my mission, which was to scan photos of Steve for his family before leaving for Palm Springs tomorrow. I feel desperate to do anything for them. Anyhow, I drove like twelve miles in the wrong direction, and had to double back, the whole while reaching for more M&Ms. I think it was a message to grief, inhaling all that candy: stay the hell away from me today. I’m tired. After fourteen days, I’m tired of grieving.

It didn’t much work – eating all those M&Ms. I think they just got piled up on top of the grief. Not to mention, when I finally arrived to Wolf Camera, I feared I might vomit onto the scanner bed. But the man who helped me in Wolf was an angel with a gold front tooth and a Romanian accent. I’m sure glad these people exist: the-nice-just-because-they-want-to-be-nice sorts – and right when you need them. Right when you feel like you might come unglued and spill your insides out in every direction if someone so much as speaks to you in the wrong octave. Right when you’ve been lost for miles and might barf up a bag of M&Ms – that’s when you need the kind souls of the world around. You need that sort of grace in a time like this – extra kindness and goodness and love.

Speaking of grace – and kindness and goodness and love, friends of mine watched my three boys for three hours so I could go to Wolf without the entourage and so I could finish writing my speech for Steve’s memorial service -- which I also needed to accomplish before leaving for Palm Springs. When the family first asked me to speak, all I could think about was how I was going to sob through the whole thing, like hyperventilating and convulsing and the whole nine yards. But so far, just writing the words down has been the hard part. Hard because I got stuck in sadness, writing about dear old Steve. It took me all week, but I think today, in those hours of blessed solitude, I finally finished. And afterward, when I went to collect the boys, the same kind friends served up some homemade mac and cheese, which I found exceedingly comforting.

And tonight, we came home to the yawning, empty suitcases that needed yet to be filled with a week’s worth of wardrobe. And then there was the business of what the hell do you wear to a funeral? Do people still wear black? Is that passé? Is it required? Do I have anything black? So I googled what to wear to a funeral and the advice was all over the place, like, make sure not to show any cleavage and wear the deceased one’s favorite color. Utterly confused and too exhausted to make a sound decision, I called my friend, D, because the last thing I want to worry about when we drive in from Palm Springs the night before the funeral is what I’m going to wear. So D came over at nine o’clock at night (more kindness and goodness and love) and told me exactly which dresses in my closet were appropriate; she’s good at this sort of thing. Then, she looked me right in the eye and asked, “Which dress would Steve have liked?” And I knew immediately he would have like the plum dress, so I’m wearing that one.

It feels odd to be going on vacation, right in the middle of all this grief. I would not have planned it this way. But you don’t plan death; and least of all a death like Steve’s. So I'm heading out in the morning, with my family, and I think the trip will just become part of the journey: the arduous journey across the foreign landscape of loss.

Diary of Grief

One Week: The Way Through

The only way out is the way through. --Howard Neberov.

Herding everybody out to the mini van this morning for church, C says, So it was a week ago today you heard the news about Steven, wasn’t it? I make a heavy sigh as I answer: It was. I can hardly believe it’s only been a week, when the news feels as fresh as hours. When, if, and how the grief gets better I don’t know. My friend, C, who lost her mother to MS recently, says, Time being a healer sure made for a lovely Eva Cassidy song, but hasn’t been true for her. Another of my friends, K, who lost her dad to brain cancer last year, says she still cries on the way home from work. I think that loss is loss; that there is no way to reframe it into something that feels better; no way of reshaping it into something that makes sense. It is one of the more painful mysteries of life. I’ve tried to create scenarios in my head, in which Steven has not really died, like instead, I have just awakened from a bad dream. But I return with regret to the reality that Steven is really gone. I agree with Neberov when he says, The only way out is the way through. But the way through is agony.

I don’t even know if the wounds that emerge in loss are meant to be healed. When a person leaves a hole in your life, the hole remains – does it not? The uniqueness of each person in our lives is just that: unique; there is no replacing him/her. But do we find healing balms that will soothe our wounds? Do we find the strength to survive? Do we find grace? And hope? Are we able to experience joy again, even in the midst of such deep sorrow? I think all of these things are possible, but the when and how of it remains an enigma to me. I marvel at people who endure loss – parents who outlive their children, in particular; I’m in awe by the way they merely survive. Steven’s family, and all people of loss, are my new heroes; but not because they want to be, or chose to be. I am humbled by their will to carry on. And I wish them every strength and grace in doing so.

Entering the sanctuary on this Sunday, my priest seeks me out with one of her famous hugs; I contacted her with the news about Steven earlier in the week. Underneath her heavy, white vestments is a heart ablaze with love. I am comforted; and don’t want to let go. And for a long moment, I don’t. For a long moment, the universe of pain stops, and it’s like coming up for air.

In the pew, I fix my eyes on the circle of stained glass above the altar. Each week, I watch the white morning light pour in through the glass, illuminating the pieced together shapes of glass and their vibrant colors. Here is where I come to piece together the shapes of myself, and my life, where I hold onto the hope that the pieces, however irregular, can still come together and form something beautiful – like the stained glass. Here in the pews of Holy Cross Episcopal Church, where I have brought every worry, every concern, every burden for the past two years, I sit with the incomprehensible loss of Steven’s life. I bring here my questions, my anger, my deep and consuming sadness. Here, in the house of my spirit, the tears fall freely. I let my chest rise and fall as it will. I cry openly.

My grandmother has always said that God puts our tears in a bottle, that somewhere in the scriptures it says so. I try to imagine the number of bottles it will take to empty my grief, the grief of Steven’s family, and all those who knew and loved him…I imagine a thousand mason jars, filled with tears, lining a window sill that stretches across the entire universe…the sill between eternity and now.

Diary of Grief

***Pictured at the right: Shannon and J.Taddei, Steve's sister**

Day Six: Together

The day begins with a fight. Right after breakfast, Chad and I launch into our goals, including the project of crafting a mosaic, garden stone for Grandma B’s birthday tomorrow. But within minutes of opening the kit, we are arguing. Chad and I rub each other wrong; we send the kids outside to play so we can talk it out. It’s tense. We’re both strung out – he, from being overworked at the hospital this week, not to mention a challenging month on the home front: first, a wife with a hideous eight day flu, and a now, a wife who is grieving. He’s having to pick up extra pieces; he’s feeling taxed. And me, I’m submerged in my grief – today, I can hardly see out of it. I feel like I will suffocate. Today, grief is twisting, gnawing on, pulling at my insides – insisting on itself. But it feels as if there’s no room for it. My family needs me; my life needs me. I’m overwhelmed. I know it’s vital to allow the feelings their rightful place inside of me, but right now, I hate grief. I resent the space it tries to occupy in my life. Grief will not be robbed, my priest told me the other day. I am only six days in, but this feels utterly true.

Chad and I sit silently now in the kitchen chairs; tears drip freely into my lap. Chad reaches over, rests his hand on my knee; I take hold of it. We have heard each other out. We’ll be okay. By grace, we’ll be okay. It’s all just harder than I want it to be.

Not fifteen minutes later, my mom phones. As soon as I hear her voice, I’m bawling into the phone. She understands what I haven’t even said: it’s a difficult morning with grief. Her words are soothing and kind. She knows; and grieves alongside me. I am going out to A’s house, she says, and you’re welcome to come along, if you want. I’m going to bring some soup and things. I don’t want to make things worse with Chad, so I decline. But after hanging up, the option of staying home to mix cement with three children sounds absurd. Traveling, instead, toward the center of the grief is what feels right. Furthermore, while much of my grief is owed to Steve’s family, and the terrible way in which they now suffer, there is an instinctive longing to be them, to offer whatever I can offer.

Grief is demanding. I never knew it was so demanding.

Unable to see clearly through my emotional clutter, I utter a confused prayer: I don’t know what to do. Show me what to do. So as casually as possible, I say: My mom’s going to visit Steve’s family today… and then I let the words hang awkwardly in the open air. And God bless Chad, who turns to me and says, You should go. I want you to go, and then opens his arms so that I can fall into them. After a minute, he adds, But I’m not doing any mosaic projects. I laugh and let him know I don’t expect him to be arranging gemstones in cement while I’m gone.

Upstairs, I pull my hair into a bun, throw on some denim, and head out to my yard to clip a bouquet. Ordinarily, arranging bouquets is something I do rather well, but just two plants in, and the bouquet is looking pathetic…Japanese Elm branches, a flowerless stalk from a Birds in Paradise…I look at the thing with great spite: it’s totally not working.

Back in the house, I whine to Chad: I want to bring something to them…I have no flowers, no soup, no nothing…what do I bring? And Chad pauses but a second, then quickly settles the matter for me: Just bring yourself.

And so I do.

The drive to Orinda is unexpectedly cathartic. Passing through the Caldecott tunnel, I find heavy sobs escaping from way down deep inside of me – loud, primitive, contorted-face kind of sobs. I realize that I belong right here, in this car; the drive to Orinda is a grace. The time alone has opened the door to my grief; a door I’ve kept mostly shut in order to survive my days; grief, refusing to be robbed, finds a way out at last.

At the house, I wrap Steve’s sister and Steve’s mom in my warms and squeeze – it feels so good to be in their embrace. I don’t want to let go. We gaze into each other’s tear-filled eyes and there is a beautiful sort of knowing between us. It is the first time this week where no explanation is needed for why I feel the way I do. It is one of the first times this week that I don’t have to pretend I’m okay when I’m actually not.

The time spent with Steve’s family feels like an earthly sort of heaven, especially for grievers: it is togetherness; it is raw and true; it is love beyond words; it is a painful, but perfect kind of warmth. It is not the awkwardness around death that I feared. It is intimate. Rather it is the wound open wide, for healing. Although it’s unforgivably difficult to see the friends I hold so dear, suffering so profoundly, I rejoice in being with them. I am honored they have welcomed me in to their sacred place of grief.

Something else happens that I didn’t know could happen in times of grief: we laugh hysterically. Peering over one another’s shoulders at old photo albums, filled with moments from Steve’s life, we howl at our mothers going braless in the seventies – what gigantic boobs they had; and at Steve’s dad, in his impossibly tight pants, his unbelievable afro; and at Steve, who at age four, is dressed in a mustard colored leisure suit. Steve’s family tells a funny story about Steve getting sandwiched in a foldout sofa when it retracts unexpectedly, his feet wiggling in the air over the cushions as he yelps for help. We laugh and laugh and laugh – until we need to cry. And then we cry.

We tell the best of the Steven stories: the memories shared between us, and even stories that are new to one another. We talk about death. We talk about life. We talk about God. We talk about wishing we could talk to the dead. And I remember now why these friends are more like family: it’s so easy to be with them. We can say anything or nothing at all; we can laugh or cry. We can share thoughts embedded deep in our souls about the way things are. And were. We can be as we are. Today, I feel profoundly thankful -- that Steve was in my life for all of those years. And that his precious family still is.

Diary of Grief

Day Five: The Journey

In the car we’re silent. It’s 3:30 and Mom and I are headed downtown to visit the place where Steve breathed his last breath. A certain trepidation pulses through me. But given the circumstances, I can’t think of another place I’d rather be going in this moment. And I am so grateful to be making this journey with my mom.

We don’t know precisely where we’re going, so we end up parking the car, trailing around a bit, then re-parking and trailing around some more. Where we park the second time, we slip past a cyclone fence and explore an empty field of brittle, brown grass. We peer over the field’s edge into the creek below and scan the length of the bank. We are looking for any sign of the cross that Steve’s family has placed in the ground. But so far there’s no sign of it and I feel a sense of panic: what if we don’t find it? The desperate need to be at the place where Steve died is difficult to explain: it is a need to be close to him again in any way possible. I whisper some prayers to Steve: Help us find it, I plead with him, show us where to go. I feel as though he hears me.

With no luck, we head out of the field and back to the car, driving another several hundred feet or so. We park near an abandoned red shopping cart and somehow, it feels like we’re close now. Mom and I head toward the freeway overpass. The most likely place for a cross seems to be at the bottom of a steep hill that leads under the overpass, composed of loose dirt. I hand my camera, as well as a giant memento rock that I’ve been carrying, to Mom, and tell her I’ll head down and check it out. Just ten unsteady steps in, and I can see the very tip of a black, wooden cross at the bottom of the hill. My heartbeat picks up and I turn toward Mom: We found it. It’s down here.

On the way down, we pass a shapeless mound of stiffened blankets in the corner, between the overpass and the dirt path. I begin to note the details of this place that is already sacred to us, this place, where, for whatever reason, Steve ended up visiting on the day he died. There is a caged area along the top of the hill, a few plaid shirts scattered in the distance, bright tagging on the beams that uphold the overpass, a mattress...

I head to the cross first, Mom following behind. Be careful, Shannon she warns. But just a few steps in I slip, throwing my leg up into the air in a wild act of balance, just in time to catch myself. I wait for Mom, and we are on the hill side by side now. On the way down, we cling to one another for balance as our feet slip and move beyond our control. We hold onto one another’s arms and hands more tightly than I can ever recall. In fact, this may be the tightest we’ve ever held one another. Each of us is concerned about the other falling. Mom looses her balance and I grab onto ever part of her body I can find, and try to steady her.

At one point, maybe a third of the way down, journeying in this loose dirt with my mother, there is a moment that occurs to me so suddenly and so briefly, I don’t know it even qualifies as a moment. First it, is a feeling, like something washing over me: a baptism of goodness. Something precious, and fragile and unexpected comes to find me in this otherwise grievous of moments: it is connection; connection with my mother. We are, here and now, despite whatever has come before us, (and for mothers and daughters, things do come) connected to each other by something larger than ourselves. It is a grace, a gift of unexpected origins. And I accept it so gratefully here on the slippery and perilous hill.

The second beautiful thing to wash over me is this: I see Steven (not literally, but with the eyes of my soul) smiling at us, Mom and I. I see him loving us in this moment. I see him as the center of this celebratory connection between my mother and I. And knowing he loves us both, I feel connected to him, too.

We finally make it, sort of galloping without choice down the last bit of that steep hill and there, wedged into a space between boulders, the black cross stands, with fresh flowers beneath it. It means everything and nothing to be here in the place where I know Steve died: everything because it’s the best the way I can find to be near him again, to honor him, to find him who cannot be found – and nothing because Steve is still gone, and visiting this place has not filled the hole that’s inside of me. I don’t know what I expect: to see an apparition of his face on the underpass walls? Or to hear his voice echoing across the creek? Maybe it’s difficult to avoid such fantasies in the midst of grief. But the spot is peaceful and that is something; not an apparition, but something. A generous sunlit wall under the overpass forms the backdrop for the scene and occupying the area just below, is a shallow body of water that connects to the creek further down. The water is so still, and beautifully lit. I think of Steve’s soul, still like that. And light. The line from the Nicene Creed, God from God, light from light, comes to mind. To think of Steve reunited with the very same light from which he came is comforting to me.

Mom tosses a colorful bouquet into the spot near the cross. It’s clear I cannot toss the ten-pound rock I’ve made for Steve, so I make the precarious climb over the boulders and lay it down.

The photo of Steve and I in Disneyland, sporting our Mickey Mouse hats and two giddy smiles, is decoupaged on the rock’s surface. In Sharpie, I have written: To my first friend ever, Steve. I love you always, Shannon. And I do. I loved him then and I love him now. And always.