Happy 34^th birthday, Beautiful Jess! I miss you so much, Girl, and I wonder, as usual on your birthday, who you would have been today if you were here. Would you have been married with a home, job, children, a traditional life? Would you be studying or working a high-pressured job writing or photo-editing, staging sets for photo shoots? Would you be happy or depressed, or both? Would you be broken or whole? Would you be enjoying your journey? These questions will never be answered, but, of course, there are so many more, many of which begin with “Why…” that haunt me day and night.

But time has moved on, and part of me has moved with it. The thing is that ever since I heard the words “Jessica is dead,” I’ve been two people. A part of me, a piece that broke off from the whole, survived because it had too. There were others I loved deeply and could not leave, and so that morsel held on tight to life and has grown over the years. She’s almost the same as a normal person but tamped down like an ember rather than a flame. But the vast me-ness died with you, and there was nothing I could do or even wanted to do to stop that departure. What people don’t get is that the life I led until that moment disappeared in a single second, and everything I was came to an abrupt end because in my essence, my personal identity, I was a mother of two wonderful daughters, and now one was gone, never to return. Now many of my qualities and attributes grew into the morsel, the “clone” of Bernie, and survived in another life. But the shocking pain of immediate loss was a nuclear bomb that detonated in my soul. That’s just the way it was. As I say all the time now: It is what it is. And, really, now, eight and a half years later, I’m OK, incredibly better in the last couple years, for sure. I’m actually happy sometimes. I experience joy and peace, things that were missing for so long. And I’m grateful for every single blessing in my life because I’m always aware that things could be so very worse. Even with my loss and grief, I still reside in the “fortunate” pan of the scales of life. I need only listen to the nightly news to know my life is both easy and good. My wonderful child though gone, died peacefully in her sleep. That is a blessing for which I’ll always be grateful.

So, yesterday, we sold five young goats and three young sheep. It had to be done. Every year, we reach the point of culling the herd. Anyone who has ever been around farm animals innately understands the concept of exponential growth. Today, you have five animals. Without culling, four years from now you have 35 animals. In nature, the die-off would keep the numbers more balanced, but if you’re a good caretaker of your animals, they quickly over-produce beyond their acreage if it’s limited. The other issue is inbreeding. I never bring in new animals because with them comes disease. Our animals are all vaccinated and healthy. They still grow old or get sick and die occasionally, but inbreeding causes weaker animals and still-borns and other problems. So, we must sell off the young ones, but we do our best to sell for grazing not slaughter.

I’m always relieved when it’s done, but it’s never easy because all mamas grieve. So last night, as I lay in bed with the window open, I could hear the ewe crying for her lambs. I closed the window. I could still hear her plaintive plea, and I could hear the voice that was screaming in my head for days and weeks after Jessie died: “THEY’VE TAKEN MY BABY! OH MY GOD, THEY’VE TAKEN MY BABY!” Why did I hear those words? Jess was 25, not a baby, and she died because of a drug taken when she unknowingly had pneumonia. No one stole her from me, and yet, my gut was frantically searching for my stolen child. Was I reliving something that happened in a previous life? Very possibly. Nonetheless, as I listened to the ewe’s cries, which continue today, I hold the guilt of knowing I took her babies away from her. It is because of me that they are gone. And that, along with Jessica’s birthday today is painfully wrenching my heart.

So, last night, unable to sleep, I went to read in the den where our new PTSD dog, Honey, a 16-month-old golden lab mix, lay in her bed. I gave her cookies and rubbed the cats who wanted loving, but I kept looking into Honey’s eyes. She’s not had an easy life so far. She lived on a farm with 50 other rescued dogs and farm animals. She’s definitely not an alpha, so when the farm owner got sick and she and the other animals were turned over to a rescue agency, she was half starved and the mother of 11 growing, healthy pups. She was only a year herself, way too young for a litter that big without special caretaking. So, she is a bit of a wreck but healing a little each day. She’s a remarkably emotive creature as her face shows when she’s scared, happy, “laughing” at us, or sad. And, last night, she looked sad. I realized she probably missed her beta pals from the farm. She must have been part of a sub-pack of more mellow dogs. But then I realized her other loss. “Do you miss your pups, Honey?” As I said “pups,” her ears shot up, and she looked at me wide-eyed. Bingo. While I’m sure 11 demanding pups were a pain in the belly, I’m also quite certain that being abruptly separated from them only added to her trauma. Yes, she is another mama who grieves.

If you love, you, ultimately, must welcome pain and loss as your companion. So many of my friends and family have experienced deep, abiding losses, and we all know that the experience changes you forever. But, thankfully, today I can be grateful for the years I had with my daughter, even those years of rebellion, wildcat behavior, and drug addiction. “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” is easy to say when you aren’t writhing in the agony of having your soul ripped asunder. But now, the high pitch of pain has softened enough that I can be grateful. The shadow part of me that forever grieves walks alongside my reborn clone who smiles and whispers her thanks for all the beauty in the world. Hopefully, someday the two mes will merge and burn brightly together as a single flame. We’ll continue the journey together, hand in hand, until we meet all those we have lost along the way. And, Jess, after we hug and cry, you’ll have some ‘splaining to do! Until then, rest in the Light, my love.

This is the first full cycle of your anniversary completed, meaning that the date of your passing—and the date of Nana’s dying and funeral, your arrival in Sacramento, our going to see Nieve cheer for her school’s football team, you returning to L.A., and you not waking up the next morning—are all happening on the days they originally occurred. So today is Sunday, November 10, and I know that you’re alone lying dead in a friend’s bed and that come this evening at 7:30, I will receive a phone call from your dad telling me that our daughter is gone. In a strange way, it’s harder like this, knowing that it’s Sunday, knowing that on Friday we buried my mother. Weird. The mind makes strange meaning out of ordinary things.

Coming up to this anniversary, for the first time, I haven’t consciously been dwelling on your dying and what your absence has meant to all of us. I’ve been going about my chores and responsibilities, focused on the present moment as years of mindfulness training have encouraged me to do. I haven’t been consciously reliving the painful moments or asking the same old unanswerable questions. Perhaps, this is the natural healing of years having passed. However, my body has been marking the days, resulting in ever-increasing anxiety and insomnia. The body knows what the mind refuses to embrace. Yet, change is good, and I’ve finally acknowledged and grown tired of how angry I’ve been at you for taking Oxymorphone and dying. For years, along with the pain of loving and missing you so much, I’ve been stuck in a pattern of wanting to scream at you when you come to mind. I realize that my anger is just one more way of refusing to accept reality and feel the pain of your permanent “goneness.” But I recently decided to try to rid myself of that useless anger (I have so many other purposes for it now that we’re all living in an Alice in Wonderland World Gone Mad) and instead speak the true words, “I love you, my Jessie. I miss you constantly. I forgive you for taking the drug. You are free to move on. I won’t cling to you and tie you to this realm any longer.” I’m hoping this release will free us both in ways I can’t yet fathom.

This medicine should be taken by the patient with the great consideration. purchased that female viagra Despression symptoms should get speedy as it online generic cialis http://greyandgrey.com/evelyn-f-gross/ averted that really serious difficulty. It viagra samples uk contains active SIldenafil citrate that belongs to the category of PDE-5 inhibitor medications. In European folk medicine it is used to treat many different types of infections caused by bacteria, such as respiratory infections, skin infections, ear infections, and cheapest cialis http://greyandgrey.com/we-remember/ sexually transmitted diseases. So starting this seventh year without you, I feel more alone in some ways, probably because the hope of your presence is absent. Life is full, but it lacks zest–like champagne without the bubbles. Many loving and supportive people value me and want me in their lives. I’m grateful. I know I don’t own the patent on suffering or grief. I am less naïve and optimistic, no longer believing in happy endings that most books promise. I realize reality is slower-moving toward healing and wholeness. The planet might get there, but it will take millennia, not decades, and people, well, we have short-term, temporary “happy endings” that last until the next big challenge. I think the best we can hope for is to find our personal meaning in the chaos of living and to cling to it with all we’ve got. Let’s all hope we leave the world a little more loving and beautiful than when we arrived. I believe Jessica did. She left her handprint on many of our hearts, and her laughter echoes in our minds.

If I have one wish, one prayer to the invisible Puppeteer, it is to hold my beloved Jessie again in a land of bright light and soft green grass. We will laugh until we snort, and happy tears fall from our eyes. We will eat the foods we love, and Jess will belch loudly without apology. We’ll sing the Indigo Girls’ Romeo and Juliette at full volume and off-key, and Jess will call me Mama and Mom and Mommy. And we will both heal and feel whole and perfectly loved and at peace. And perhaps we’ll live happily ever after as the sun sets in the beautiful azure-blue sky.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of my beloved daughter Jessica Ellen Kelly’s leaving this sphere of existence. I write these blog posts twice a year now, once at her birthday in June, and then in November at the time of her leaving. Why do I bother? Originally, it was a place to express all the pain, sorrow, anger, and confusion inside me, almost to provide a drain to relieve the unbelievable pressure constantly building and ready to erupt. But it was also a way for me to share my grief journey with others traveling a similar path, a place for honesty, a territory where no platitudes were allowed, no simplistic cures for grief that is uniquely gifted to parents who have lost a child. No, just because you’ve lost a grandparent, parent, sibling, or friend, you don’t understand this pain. I’m not denying your depth of grief. I’m just saying that the pain of losing a child exists in a separate realm that you don’t ever want to visit. And like Hotel California, we can never leave.

I haven’t been able to ignore that as the years have passed, Jessie has moved into the land of memories for her friends and more distant relatives. In June, Jess would have turned 30. For the first few of years after her death, her friends would mark her birthday and passing by posting to her Facebook page, but this year, at this pivotal marker between youth and real adulthood, “the big 3-0,” none of her friends posted or probably remembered. And, I know, this is the proper way of things, albeit so sad for me, that people move on as they should on their own journeys, remembering the good times and letting go of the sorrow. That’s how people survive and thrive emotionally. And that is what her parents absolutely cannot do. We have gotten on with the demands of living and participated to the best of our abilities, but I know that neither her father nor I ever move far from the wrongness of our girl’s leaving, the agony of the hollowed out place where our hearts once resided.

After Jess passed (don’t you love these hygienic words that soften the blow of death?), I was told by other grieving parents that in their experience, it took seven to nine years to get to the point of sort of living a normal life again, and that at five years, one could sense the hope of future healing and wholeness returned. All I wanted was to fall into a deep slumber and wake up today, having bypassed all the insufferable agony of the years between. But today I awaken and realize the coveted alleviation of deep suffering and return of light-filled hope for future healing and restoration are nowhere in sight. Do I cling too tightly to this loss? Do I use it as an excuse for my inability to be joy-filled and happy? What is wrong with me? Or is this just me continuing to be Jessie’s mom and clinging to my grief because it is the surest connection to my child? These are the questions I face now. And I know there aren’t easy answers.

Thankfully, functionality has returned. I couldn’t have survived long in the condition I was in the first year—shaking as if with a palsy, forgetting what I was saying in the midst of a sentence, incapable of deep sleep or being around crowds, or loud sounds, bright light, strong smells. On constant hyper-alert with anxiety the ever-present drumbeat of my minutes, hours, and days. No, I lived life breath by breath just trying to make it through the next hour as voices screamed questions, loss, agony inside my head. I can imagine the ease of slipping into madness having lived that first and indeed second year. I’m grateful to my husband, Chris, and daughter Sarah for seeing me through that time, comforting me and providing necessary distractions to give my mind and body time to heal. I’m also grateful to the dear friends who listened patiently as I screamed my hatred for God, the Universe, and all the unfair forces in this life that stole my child from me. You didn’t have to stick around, but you did, and I love you.
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Five years later, I no longer shake, and my memory is better though I have lost huge chunks of time that will probably never return. I’m able to be passionate, at least regarding outrage and beauty. I’m healthy. I am quite capable at my work, whether running my projects in my day job or teaching English at night. I make other people laugh. I can experience simple pleasures like working in my gardens or cooking in my kitchen. Jess is never far from my thoughts nor is the fear of losing my other daughter. I still live in a state of high alert, knowing that the next phone call may take me where I refuse to go. I cope with my anxiety by assuring myself that I will never go through this again, that there is a choice, an escape clause. I meditate. I work at developing some sort of spiritual practice though, at times, I believe there is nothing beyond body and mind, the solid, knowable earth and stone.

And because I’m still here on Planet Earth, which continues to experience 24-hour revolutions, time has passed and will continue to do so. A week ago, we celebrated my daughter Sarah’s marriage to her now-husband, George. As they say in journalism, “A good time was had by all!” I made myself stay present in the moment. I knew, without doubt, that I could go out of body and watch it all from afar, as I tend to do, but that I would live with regret the rest of my days. This daughter is alive! I am blessed and fortunate to have a surviving child. I know some who do not, and they have my deepest respect and awe at having survived. Sarah is brilliant and beautiful and loving and caring—all things every parent hopes for. I put far too much pressure on her (is there a book written by the surviving child delineating the stress these children live under?) because my mother’s-heart developed a surplus of love for two children and now only one remains. All that extra mothering has no other release. I’m fortunate to have two wonderful stepchildren who have accepted and love me. This helps immensely. I’m told by others that grandchildren will be the healing I need. We will see. But for now, I just keep on, keeping on, loving the children who are here walking alongside me and aching for the child I carry in my broken heart.

I still long to see you and hear your crazy laughter, my beautiful Little Jessie Bear.

I feel that every year at this time I write a post that starts, “So many years ago, my beautiful daughter died.” And here I go again. Four years have passed, and as some of you who have lost children know, in some ways, absolutely nothing has changed from the moment of getting that nightmare phone call telling me that my beloved Jessica had been found dead. A year ago, I wrote that I didn’t feel that I had it in me to go on, that I was too bone-weary exhausted and heartbroken to face each day, not only without my child, but watching this world getting crazier and crazier. But here I am. I have dragged myself, sometimes kicking and screaming, into each day and attempted to “fight the good fight” for the people I love, the values I hold dear, and for the salvation of this beautiful planet that we all call home. Sometimes I’ve felt that my presence has made a difference to someone or something, so I’ve given myself a mental pat on the back, a “You go, Girl!” to acknowledge my effort. Other days, I’ve beaten myself up because of my failures, those that might have inadvertently contributed to Jess’ death and the others that are merely the signs of my own imperfect humanity. But at the end of many, if not most days, I’ve often doubted that I had the strength to rise the following morning like Sisyphus and push that damn rock back up that unholy hill. Often, it all just feels like too much.

Yet, I continue to live if not thrive, with or without any wholehearted intention or desire to do so. I’m constantly amazed at how hard it is for some to be rid of life while others die so easily. I’ve met quite a few parents who have outlived a child, and we are as diverse a group as any really. Some manage to at least appear to get back on their feet relatively quickly. They have their faith, which provides them with hope and purpose perhaps, or they take on a cause that somewhat fills the empty hole within them where their child once resided. They refuse to get stuck in the hallways of their minds where the unanswerable questions echo incessantly (why her, why me, why mine?). They choose to move beyond (no one really moves “on,” I believe, from the death of a child). Others flat give up. They fall apart and never mend. They silently or noisily go mad with sorrow and get stuck in the moment of loss, never reentering the world of the truly alive. I have wished at times I could join them. Many, many are like me, kind of lost, stumbling around, but doing their best to play the part of heroic survivor, wringing whatever is life-giving and nurturing from what often feels like the dry bones of existence, fearing the inevitable next phone call.

I recently visited the counselor I saw during the first year of my grief. I had literally lost one of my dear cats (she later was found dead in the wood pile) and Tom Petty, my absolute favorite musician, on the same day. The cat I had had for probably 15 years, Tom Petty for decades. I was bereft. I still am. I told my counselor that I have a grief closet in my soul (I may have written about this before) and explained that every time something I love dies, I have to open the grief door to add in the latest victim. When the door opens, all of the old grief spills out because it is a very full and messy closet. I can see this picture in my mind where I’m leaning with my whole body against the closet door, with legs and arms and cat tails sticking out, and pushing with all my might to slam it shut. But the closet’s too full, and there are simply too many bodies, and the best I can do is stand there forever trying to keep the mess enclosed. That’s what my grief feels like. Part of me is forever leaning against that fucking closet door even as I go about being highly efficient at my day job and enthusiastic in my night teaching job, and managing to remain passionate about so many causes, all the while clinging to the memories of the ones I have lost. What’s it all about, Alfie? I honestly don’t know. I keep reaching for the answers, but as one songwriter said, “My hands come up empty.”

But it is what it is, and life goes on. Why is it that platitudes have turned into mantras for survival? Well, they’re better than, “You’re so strong!” or “God wanted another angel in Heaven!” The fact is THIS IS REAL! Not all pain is surmountable. You simply deal with it and get on. You carry it with you in every breath and heartbeat. I speak for not only myself but so many others who are coerced by society into putting on a good face and “getting on with it” because, after all, four years is really an awful long time to be miserable and “hold” onto your grief. God protect the person who has the audacity to say to my face, “Jess would have wanted you to live on and be happy!” YEAH, WELL, SHE FUCKING SHOULDN’T HAVE TAKEN THAT PILL THEN, RIGHT? She should have come to me and said, “Mom, I’m really sad right now cuz Nana just died, and I split up with my boyfriend, and I don’t feel well, and I’m kind of feeling out of control. Can you help me?” And I would have dropped absolutely everything and held her and told her that it would all be OK, and we were going to make it through this together, and why don’t you spend another night, and I’ll feed you and take you shopping and run you a bubble bath and hug you and make you laugh, and all the things I CAN’T EVER DO NOW! THAT’S REAL! THAT’S NOT GOING AWAY!
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And that’s the truth I live with. So far, the pain hasn’t dissolved. It’s become more manageable, and I believe that as time passes, it will continue to do so because, really, memory plays a part in grief, and as the years go by, memory fades, and the daily stuff just crowds in and takes over. Maybe that’s why the grief community talks about the magical “nine years” that it takes for joy to return. Perhaps it takes that long to dull the memory enough for joy to have a fighting chance at survival. Who knows? I’ll probably still be here writing about the journey at year nine, and I’ll share what I’ve learned. I do know I am now able to choose to see the beauty around me whenever possible. I acknowledge what soothes my soul and gives me respite. And I remind myself constantly that many in the world have lost far more than I, that my loss, while painful, is shadowed by greater suffering and horror that are a worldwide daily occurrence.

Meanwhile, thank you to all the people who love, encourage, and accept me for the broken merchandise I am. Please don’t try to change me. If you can’t abide, I understand. But I will remain forever present and true to my reality. As my counselor told me, “You’re still taking care of Jessie, and you’re never going to stop. Because you’re her mom, and that’s your job.” I have other jobs too, and I try to do them the best I can. I’m a mother to my darling, beautiful Sarah, and a wife to my beloved husband Chris, a stepmother to Carly and Cody. I’m a friend to many and a relative to few. But I will forever be my Jessie Bear’s mom, and that’s a role I’m not willing to part with.

Sweet girl, come whisper in my ear. I’ll listen and wrap you in my love. I’m never going to abandon you, so come find me, darling. There is still great beauty in this world, but I will choose the darkness over the light if it means feeling you near.

Three long years have passed since I got the news that my dear youngest daughter, Jessica, my little Jessie Bear, was found dead at the age of 25, apparently having slipped away in her sleep after taking Oxymorphone without knowing that she was suffering from bacterial pneumonia. Her breathing slowed because of the drug, and, I assume, her lungs filled with liquid due to the pneumonia, and she simply stopped breathing. Certainly a peaceful way to go if that is your intention, not so, if totally accidental. And certainly not for those left behind who loved her dearly and now must face each day knowing they’ll not see her sweet face or hear her snorky laughter again this side of eternity, if such a thing exists.

When I was 20 and living alone in Ireland, I was told by an Irish friend who had received a phone call from my family (I had no phone of my own) that my elderly father had passed away. He was 79, and I had grown up being told that I better appreciate my father because I wouldn’t have him long. In my childhood home our bedrooms were attached, and I would lay awake in my bed listening for the sound of my father breathing to assure myself that he was still alive. Of course, I was totally unprepared for the news and had to grieve on my own in a foreign country. My mother told me not to bother coming home as my father had already been cremated, and there would be no ceremony. Mine was certainly an unloving and dysfunctional family. Still, I loved my father dearly even knowing that I wasn’t his favorite, that prize belonging to my older sister who suffered from a major illness for all her teenage years. Although I had virtually lost most all of my aunts and uncles and some younger relatives by the time of my father’s death, I still knew nothing about the art of grieving, so I stumbled along in a daze, stupor, or nightmare, shocked and unbelieving that I would never see my father or hear his voice again. Strangely, within a day or so of hearing of his death, I received the last letter he had written me imploring me to someday go back to college, but assuring me that he understood my desire to escape and see the world, that, he too, had desired such adventure at my age.

The simple truth is it took me three long, painful years until I was able to speak or think of my dad without crying. My heart was simply gripped with pain and loss, and I couldn’t imagine ever feeling joy again. But I was young, and so much of life was still ahead of me, and besides, as horrible as it was, there was also a sort of rightness to the timing of his death. I had outlived him, which is the way things are supposed to be. It wasn’t my fault I was born so late in his life. It was simply the fact that I wasn’t likely to have my father with me for long. I’d always known that, and when I first heard the words, “Your father has died,” I thought, “Now the worst has happened, and I’m still here. I’ve survived.”

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But here I am, Nov. 10, 2016, three years after my daughter’s wrongful death and two days after Trump’s election, and honestly, more than anything, I just don’t think I have it in me to go on. I don’t have the strength to fight the good fight, to put my chin up, and keep walking forward. For me, life is so very difficult on the best of days that the thought of watching my country destroyed, which I believe will happen, seeing the slow destruction, day-by-day, of people’s hard-won rights and the few protections we’ve put in place to save the planet, to watch a narcissistic madman embarrass all of us before the world and potentially wage war because of his out of control ego, while inside I yearn with all my heart to see my daughter again, I just don’t have the strength to continue.

I am not suicidal, don’t get me wrong. I have another brilliantly wonderful daughter whom I wouldn’t hurt by taking my life, and a loving, loyal, supportive husband who has stood by me despite my many encouragements to go find a happy life without me. But in my tired, weaker moments I just wish I could be in the wrong place at the right time, that my life could be sacrificed so that some other young daughter or son could live a full, long life. I know there are many who would scold me if they read these words, but they can’t know the pain I live with daily. There are others who live with much worse pain and do it gracefully. More power to them. I’m not as strong as everyone keeps telling me I am. I’m tired. Bone deep, foot dragging, out of breath exhausted. And I am sad and soul-destroyed. I’m told if I can make it to five years after the death, life starts again slowly. I just don’t think I have it in me. I long for dissolution and a return to my brothers and sisters in the elements. I long for mindlessness and a cessation of feeling. I long for total darkness and silence and above all peace. I long to join my Jessie Bear somewhere in the ether and hold her in my arms forever.

It’s hard to believe my daughter has been gone for nearly two and a half years. Time does indeed fly even when you’re not having fun. This has been an interesting journey, no doubt, though not one I would have volunteered for nor would I recommend. But for someone who’s always thought everything to death and contemplated the minutiae of living, I find myself equally dissecting my grief path, almost as if I’m a quiet observer standing alongside some other mother experiencing her worst nightmare.

Even there, I must stop and correct myself. Losing Jess in the manner in which she died is by far not my worst nightmare. There was no violence, torture, rape, or other assaults on my dear girl. She just fell asleep after having taken a drug not prescribed to her without realizing that she had pneumonia. Huge warning to those who think they “know what they can handle” and thus play Russian Roulette with not only their lives, but the lives of everyone who loves them. As I tried to tell my all-knowing daughter, “Someday you could do something that you’ve done before that caused you no problem, but because something you’re unaware of is going on in your body, it could kill you.” On the web site of Oxymorphone, obviously my daughter’s momentary drug-of-choice, appears a warning box stating that there’s a risk of respiratory failure for folks with lung problems like asthma, bronchitis, and I would suggest, pneumonia. Of course, in the moment of choice, people who believe they’re immortal don’t stop to read the warning boxes. We all believed my daughter to be drug-free, but I have a feeling she used this one drug-use as a carrot to get her through her grandmother’s funeral, her breakup with her boyfriend, and the other issues that were exhausting her emotionally and physically at the time. Do I feel vindicated having foretold my child’s death? Far from it. Sadness is all I know. Well, again, that’s not totally true. I am still angry at Jess for continuing to take chances without consideration of all of us who would pay the price. The world suffers because this one bright light no longer shines. What difference could she have made? If she had lived, who could she have become? She was so intelligent, such an incredible writer, insightful, and feeling. And it’s all gone now. All that potential wiped clean by one bad choice.

So here I am all these months later, having lived beyond my beautiful child. I’ve somehow evolved into two people, or two versions of myself, simultaneously existing within this one body. The “Strong Bernie” has gotten up from the pile of broken glass that was her life and rebuilt what she could so as to move forward in her old high-functioning manner, even learning to smile again and make others laugh. She can manage to hold down her job, keep up with her chores, be a friend, a wife, a mother to her remaining daughter and step-mother to her grown step-children. She has searched for reasons to continue despite the constant pain and background noise of her mind. Because behind Strong Bernie is Grieving Bernie. Often she’s still laying lacerated among the shards. She’s still in shock remembering the phone call that ended her life (phone calls still cause her terrible anxiety), the moment of certainty when she saw the faces of her ex, her eldest daughter, and the other family members who were gathered around the chaplains. The primeval wailing she heard coming from her own body as she sank to the ground and shattered. Grieving Bernie’s questions are unanswered and will likely remain so as only Jessie knows why and how her last evening transpired. She keeps the candles on Jess’ altar lit and remembers, remembers, remembers because that’s how she holds on and makes it through each day. Hardly anyone speaks her daughter’s name or brings her into conversation. It feels as if everyone has simply moved on, having put the tragedy in the past, like an old wedding dress, wrapped in blue paper and locked away in cedar.
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But Strong Bernie and Grieving Bernie have a pact. Grieving Bernie will keep herself quiet, invisible, in the background so that Strong Bernie can continue being the functional presence in the world. And Strong Bernie will protect Grieving Bernie because she has the right to be, to continue, to exist and honor the fact of her daughter’s life. Strong Bernie will let no one bully Grieving Bernie into doing things that she isn’t ready for or tell her that the clock is ticking on her scheduled grief and soon the world will send her a notice that her grief is no longer valid because she “needs to get over it.” Strong Bernie won’t allow anyone to censor the manner or display of grief when Grieving Bernie is allowed to show herself because she knows what is healthy and appropriate and right about being honest and real and true. Strong Bernie actually treasures Grieving Bernie because she knows without her she’s a shell, just a veneer or façade, necessary to stay on this planet in this earthly body and continue living a “productive” life. But Grieving Bernie is the pearl because she’s the one who paid the ultimate price for loving without limit or hesitation. She is the heart that has been broken.

I wonder if someday Strong Bernie and Grieving Bernie will evolve into a singular being with one voice, one who has both the strength and vulnerability of having survived what no parent should. Perhaps, one day Wise Bernie will appear, having made peace with her great loss and committed to fully living, loving, and learning from the life she still has, that which her daughter sacrificed when she chose momentary escape from pain and stress. From this moment’s perspective, I have no idea what the future will bring or how I will evolve, but given my nature and propensity for change, I do expect that six months or a year will bring me further transformation. And hopefully, with time and change will come peace and stillness, and perhaps echoes of my daughter’s sweet voice or kooky laugh. I can only hope.

Two years ago I got the call from my ex-husband telling me that a chaplain was at his house, and he had been told our younger daughter, Jessica, had died in Los Angeles. She had spent the night with a friend and had died in bed while her friend was at work. Since that moment, I have struggled to remain on this planet, and had it not been for my older daughter, Sarah, I would have followed Jess into that dark night. Not even my love for my husband, other family, or my friends would have kept me here to live with this pain. It just simply is too much.

But here I remain, two years later. And what do I know now that I didn’t know in the moment before I heard those dreadful words? What have I learned, for surely, though no one would voluntarily pay the price for such knowledge there must be some understanding gained in the face of so much loss? For what it is worth to anyone interested, here is my two-year short list of lessons learned from heartbreaking grief and loss:

• I will never get over losing my daughter. The pain may dull (I can hope) in time in much the same way that the agony of an intense injury eases as the body adjusts to its new reality. The injury is always there manifesting its brokenness at different levels at different moments, and often strikes when you’re going about your normal business unprepared for the stabbing pain. It’s hard to imagine ever experiencing joy again, but I refuse to rule out the possibility. For now, I strive for peace and contentment.

• I don’t know if this loss will ever feel real. There’s a hazy, dreamlike quality about my life now, almost as though I’m standing outside in the snow watching another woman going about the business of living. “Look at that, she’s smiling.” “She seems competent and functional.” “She can still multi-task…more or less.” But inside my mind is the litany, “This can’t be real. Jessie is NOT gone forever. She still feels present. She just hasn’t called. I should be able to see her no matter where she is. Why is this happening? Why has this happened?”

• I just have to get on with it. One breath at a time. People think you live in days. I’m not there yet, nowhere near there. Not with that litany in my head. The only time I’m free from the pain or at least numb to it is when I’m very distracted. Once in a while, I can just sit with the pain, and let it be what it is, and accept it. “So, ok, this is painful. I can just live with this pain right now, in this moment.” I remember during labor with Jess thinking, “I can handle this one contraction. This one won’t be too much. I can live with this agony for one minute.” And that’s how I made it through her birth, one contraction at a time. And now, that’s how I’m making it through her death, one agonizing moment at a time.
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• But guess what I’ve finally figured out? Without a doubt, I’m not a victim. Jess didn’t do this to me. She didn’t die so I would have to learn to live without her. No god or the universe said, “Hmmm, today I’m going to really screw up Bernie Creelman’s life just for the fun of it (or because it will make her stronger, or because Jessie is such an angel I need her in Heaven, or because there’s some huge Master Plan reliant on this woman’s daughter dying a tragic death at age 25).” Because the two huge truths I’ve finally grasped are 1) I am totally powerless to control or change anyone or anything. The best I can hope for is that I might, just might, be able to control or change something within myself; and, 2) I have choices. They’re all around me, in every aspect of my life. When I least feel in control or don’t feel as if I have any choices is when I need to stop and look at what I’m doing and what my options are for doing something a little or a lot differently.

I certainly never chose to have my daughter die before me. And for a while, I was screaming at a God I didn’t believe in, and the Universe, and the Creator, and everything else with potential power that could have possibly made my daughter die and thus taken away my potential for joy. But no one and nothing did this unthinkably horrible deed to spite me or teach me a life lesson or help me to grow to my ultimate potential. So what do I do with this knowledge? How do I make sense of the randomness of life? If you ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe you’ve heard that the answer to the ultimate “What’s it all about, Alfie” question is “42.” That’s right, 42. But I have to disagree. I think that Forrest Gump had it right: the ultimate answer is “Shit happens.” And not only shit, but beauty too, and love, and joy, and pain, and sorrow, and loss so great you don’t know how you will ever make it through the minute.

But within all that “stuff” are choices, and what I choose to do with the stuff in my life ultimately determines, I think, what I will get out of it at the end. There are some moments when the only choice is to sit and suffer for a while, knowing that “this too shall pass” in time (though probably not quickly enough). I try not to take out my pain on others (though my husband and the dog are sometimes barked at when I’m tired and at the end of my pain tolerance). They are both infinitely patient with me, thank goodness. Sometimes the only way to live in the moment is to have some brighter goal for the future. And sometimes I accept the pain as my connection to Jessie. Sometimes I rail away at Jess for the choice she inadvertently made that led to her death. Sometimes I aim my anger at others whom I think could have prevented her death in one way or another. But at the end of all that energy is the reality that she is still gone, and I’m still here without her. Yet, the other thing I know is that time passes quickly enough, each year screeching by in a blur, and hopefully, I will be seeing her again before I know it.

So I’ve made it through two years when I remember saying to my daughter Sarah, “I can’t do this,” and she, in all her wisdom-beyond-her-years answered, “But, Mom, you’re doing it.” I’ve cried buckets of tears in the last week as all the memories have flooded brightly into my mind and the “two years ago” events and moments chilled me to the bone. I miss my baby girl in all of my memories of her—the angel baby, toddler, little girl, tweenie, teenager (well, some of the time), and into her young womanhood that was cut way too short. I’ve not deified her nor made her into something she wasn’t. I remember her in all her glorious craziness and chaos and brains and emotions and ego. She was and always will be such a bright, shining light. She still shines for me and all who love her. Big hugs and thousands of kisses, my darling girl.

I’ve been to a couple of Compassionate Friends meetings recently (a support group for parents who have children who have died) and listened to speakers who specialize in grief and loss. Both stated at the beginning that neither had personally experienced their child dying, and I appreciated their honesty and acceptance that though they have lost other important people in their lives, they can’t begin to know what parents go through.

I don’t tend to get a lot out of listening to speakers since they tend to say things that I already have thought through or dealt with. What they can’t do is provide a remedy for the agonizing pain that still frequently strikes and breaks my wounded heart anew. However, by listening to others who are grieving, I have learned that I’m fortunate compared to so many others I’ve met (it’s hard to think of myself as fortunate now that my daughter died, but there you have it). Before Jess died, I’d already been deeply involved and spent most of my life doing what I call “my homework,” the deep internal work of questioning and challenging my beliefs and behaviors that brings about healing, strength, and clarity. Sometimes with a counselor, sometimes through religion or spirituality, but mostly on my own just constantly thinking, thinking, thinking, I’ve healed the old wounds and worked through so many of the life’s puzzles.

I’ve always been a thinker; in fact, I’ve often been accused of thinking too much. But that’s ok because all of the thinking I’ve done throughout my life has taught me to see the world differently, to catch the nuances that so significantly impact meaning and outcomes, to pick up on things that most people are absolutely unaware of. That’s what I believe clairvoyancy is all about (although there is a spiritual dimension as well). The world around us and within us is constantly sending us clues, but if we aren’t attune, we miss the messages that profoundly determine outcomes.

The other result of my homework is that I would consider myself a very authentic person by nature. I simply cannot pretend to be what I’m not. Perhaps I am just genetically predisposed to openness. As I’ve always said, “What you see is what you get.” You can take me or leave me, but my integrity won’t allow me to behave counter to who I genuinely am.

I’m not meaning to toot my own horn here. My point is I figured out on my own that I’ve been furious over my daughter’s death–at the world that appears so trivial now, at the old “god” I worshipped when I was younger, at my daughter for her part in her death, at the universe for not keeping whatever bargains I thought I had made to keep my children safe. And I figured out early on that probably 80 percent of my mourning is for my own lost life and identity rather than for what Jess won’t have the chance to experience (sounds selfish, but I think she’s fine wherever she is–or isn’t…I, on the other hand, will never be the same). I figured out immediately that I wasn’t going to pretend for anyone that my grieving is done or that I’m better than I am. I will withdraw from people, situations, and conversations, but I won’t pretend that I’m all hunky dory in my life now. I realized quickly that I couldn’t control my grief, shut down the pain, lock my feelings in a closet for more than a short time and then only when absolutely needing a mental break from the constant questioning and pain. I have to live my life authentically, and right now this means answering the constant, “How are you’s?” with “As good as I can be,” “Not great,” or “I’m ok right now.”
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What I’ve seen and heard from many others is that they cannot authentically grieve and be with their true feelings (especially the anger and pain) because all their lives they’ve been trained to behave well in public, to please everyone else, to not make waves or cause displeasure. And most people aren’t comfortable with this sort of grief. They want us to get better, or they want to be able to fix us. They can’t just stand by and listen without saying silly things like, “God wouldn’t have let this happen if He didn’t know you could handle it;” “Your daughter wouldn’t want you to be sad! You need to be happy for her since she’s in a better place;” “You’ve just got to realize that so many people love and need you.” Sound familiar? Have you ever said these things to people facing great sadness in their lives? We probably all have said something trite at one point or another.

And so now, when these desperately grieving parents have to face the greatest challenge and loss of their lives, they’re having to be false, to paint on fake smiles, or agree with some stupid comment made out of ignorance. They have to swallow the suggestion dished out to them by well-meaning family, friends, coworkers, and church members that their time of grieving has expired, and now they need to “move on with their lives.” Like that’s ever going to happen or even a possibility!

Fortunately for me, I have the inner strength and belief in myself to say “No!” to anyone trying to force a cure on me. And I have no problem, if pushed, saying a few other choice things. Mainly, I just walk away. The truth is that for each of us, we’re on a journey, a solo one. Even our spouses, if we have them, aren’t with us because in our hearts, we’re alone with our pain, our brokenness, our questions, our grief. It’s just me and the voice in my head. I’ve got to live with this heartache, and I’ve got to continue the journey on my own. I don’t know what will happen, or who I will become, if I have a rich future ahead of me, or if I will live a dimished life because of Jessie dying. The deck hasn’t been fully dealt. All I can do is be true to who I am right NOW and be open to what I may become in the future.

In the meantime, I tend to be the dissenting voice in the meetings, the one saying, “You bet I’m angry!” when others have declared that they’re becoming kinder, gentler, more accepting people. While that could be true for them, I know there are plenty others there who are struggling and who simply don’t have the strength or permission to speak up for themselves. I want to encourage everyone to be authentic, to allow themselves to be real with their grief, and to tell others the way to the exit if they can’t accept this. If we are to survive this journey–and perhaps even grow through the pain–we have to be real, we have to continue to do the homework, painful and lonely though it may be. There is no easy way through this nightmare of loss.