25th Birthday - January 16, 2017

Happy 25th Birthday Josh! It has been a long time since I've written on your blog - the last post was April 2016.

Today was Martin Luther King Jr. Day which meant that I had the day off - very fortuitous as the motivation to sit, concentrate and work was non-existent.

I went to the store near your park hoping to buy a 25th Birthday balloon but no such luck. But as the woman was blowing up the balloons I did choose, and saw me grab a bouquet of red roses, I wondered if she wondered who the balloons/flowers were for, and why the two incongruent balloon messages. She didn't ask and I didn't volunteer.

It was cold and blustery at the park, so after securing your balloons and scattering rose petals, it took a while to get a picture in which the balloons were legible - my fingers were numb when I got back in the car. Once thawed, I sat and wrote my weekly (most times) letter to you....a small section shared below:

I am grateful for your life, Josh, and in a weird way - never thought I would say this - for your death. JOLT - like being hit by lightening bolt....SHOCK - like those pads on chest that shock the heart to beating again. Your death put me on a journey...on a path....to awareness and awakening. Why does it take tragedy or crisis to wake up? Why take tremendous suffering to become a seeker?  

I feel there is something I should be doing with this life but don't know what. And running out of time at 55 years old. What am I supposed to be doing?  Show me.  

After the park, I went to see a movie that he would've wanted to see....Rogue One, the new Star Wars movie which was surprisingly good. Gillian is working in China now (time difference is 13 hours ahead) so when we FaceTimed yesterday, it was already January 16th and she was feeling sad. I mentioned the idea of seeing the movie which she did as well. So if Josh was hanging around us, he saw it twice - at the Tysons Mall in Virginia and in Guangzhou, China.

Throughout the day, I received texts from friends/family as well as from Josh's friends.  It has been almost 8 years and he is still remembered by his friends who are all now mature adults, moving forward in their lives and taking Josh with them. This thought brings much comfort.

Posting this picture on Facebook brought more comments - it still surprises me how connected we can be through social media. Which reminds me of the awful day and how most people found out - it was via Facebook and text messages on phones. By the time school let out mid-afternoon, all of his friends knew - many of them came to our home as soon as they could.

But as connected as we are, and even more so now with Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, imessage, FaceTime, wechat and who know what else is out there or will be invented, why are kids still taking their lives?  Josh had many friend's numbers in his phone - why didn't he or couldn't he reach out?

I will end this post with one quote from a dear friend we knew while living in Australia.  She never knew Josh as we were back in the US when he was born, but she is a mom so knows.

Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.

RIP Josh
Love Mom xxxooo

Six Years and 3 Months Later: Thoughts from "Heaven's Coast" by Mark Doty

Mark Doty's work as an award-winning poet and memoirist is impressive (see biography on poetryfoundation.org).

His first prose work, Heaven's Coast (1996) is a grief memoir, written after the death of his beloved partner, Wally Roberts.  Having been on my wish list for a long time, I finally ordered from Amazon at the beginning of the year and read it last month.

Heavily dog-eared and underlined, I related to many of his descriptions of death, grief, sorrow and the slow business of recovery.

Wally died in 1994 from AIDS. Mark was with him to the very end and vividly describes the body, post-death:

Without spirit, the body closes back into itself like an old piece of furniture, an armoire whose ancient wood is still fragrant, resinous, whose whorled grains and steady sleep refer back to the living tree. The cabinet is an elegy to the tree from which it arose, the body a brief unkeepable elegy to the quick and shining self.

Apt analogy of the indescribable - the non-living body of a beloved.

While waiting for the ambulance to arrive on that horrible day, Josh's body was more a shell of him. And seeing his body again several days later at the funeral home, I remember thinking is this really my son? It does not look like him.  The essence - that which made the body Josh, was gone.

The funeral director encouraged us to have an open casket saying that it would be better for his friends if they saw his body - a concrete, visual evidence of his passing would help with closure. So we did have a viewing period before the service began. I spent that time in the lobby, accepting condolences but in hindsight, I would rather have been at the casket to see friends and family say good-bye.

Another moving part of the book was the search for the right word to describe his feelings - I will quote the whole passage as paraphrasing would not do justice:

Grief is too sharp and immediate; maybe it's the high pitch of the vowel sound, or the monosyllabic impact of the word, as quick a jab as knife or cut.

Sadness is too ephemeral, somehow; it sounds like something that comes and goes, a response to an immediate cause which will pass in a little while as another cause arises to generate a different feeling.

Mourning isn't bad, but there's something a little archaic about it. I think of widows keening, striking themselves, clutching at handfuls of dust - dark-swathed years, a closeting of self away from the world, turned inward toward an interior dark.

Sorrow feels right, for now. Sorrow seems large and inhabitable, an interior season whose vaulted sky's a suitable match for the gray and white tumult arched over these headlands. A sorrow is not to be gotten over or moved through in quite the way that sadness is, yet sorrow is also not as frozen and monochromatic, to my mind, as mourning. Sadness exists inside my sorrow, but it's not as large as sorrow's realm; it comes and goes without really touching the overarching whole. This sorrow is capacious; there's room inside it for the everyday, for going about the workday stuff of life....Sorrow is the cathedral, the immense architecture; in it's interior there's room for almost everything: for desire, for flashes of happiness, for making plans for the future. And for watching all those evidences of ongoing life crumble in the flash of remembering, in the recurring wave of fresh grief.

In this quote, I love the poet in Doty trying to match word to feeling, and the reasons why grief, sadness and mourning are discarded in favor of sorrow.  This rings true and I find comfort in having a word that can encompass all the feelings one may have in a given hour, day, week, month or year(s).

So we are in our 7th summer without Josh. The girls have moved back home and once again, our home is full of energy. And in addition to our two Shih Tzu-poos, Buddy and Benji, we also have Gillian's dog, Huck (formerly Tyler and Em's) and Sydney, Lauren's dog.

We can re-name our home "The Anderson Hotel and Kennel" - which Josh would've loved.

RIP Josh
Love you and miss you....

Thoughts from "Searching for Mercy Street: A Journey Back to My Mother, Anne Sexton" by Linda Gray Sexton

Linda Gray Sexton became a suicide survivor at 21-years old when her mother killed herself by sitting in a running car with the garage doors closed.  The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet's battle with mental illness was over.  Anne Sexton was only forty-five years old.

In the years following her mother's death, Linda finished college, edited and published Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters (1977), got married, had two children after suffering several miscarriages, published four novels, was a critical contact for Diane Middlebrook, author of Anne Sexton: A Biography (1991), suffered from the same illness and suicidal ideation as her mother and at the age of thirty-six, was at a place in life where her mother's death overshadowed everything.

The answer to her psychotherapist's question, "How often do you think about your mother?  Once a week?  Once a month?" was "How about every day."

In her words, she "needed an exorcism" and what resulted was this brutally honest memoir published in 1994, twenty years after her mother's death.

Rather than being cathartic, she found writing Searching for Mercy Street to be more a testimony to the events of her life - the abandonment, the chaos, the strange sexual games played with her mother, the domestic abuse, Anne's multiple suicide attempts and resulting hospitalizations, the constant manipulation as well as the few positive memories such as the writing lessons received at their kitchen table.

As I told my own story, I validated my life's experiences and toughened myself; it was a part of my self-education, one that helped me gain control over what had once seemed unmanageable.  Silence compels us to look at what lies behind it, and revelation brings with it knowledge - which is why some feel as if they must write about the private aspects of their lives, in search of solace and clarity.  To speak candidly, with neither justification nor humiliation, relieves the haunting of memory and mind and becomes one way to regain our dignity and our strength. 

Yes! - this is EXACTLY why I continue to write in my journal and on this blog.  It is a testimony to the journey I was thrust on, against my will, kicking and screaming, over five years ago.

So this is a very personal memoir about living with mental illness and suicide, both her mother's and her own.  Through her own suffering, she is able to absolve her mother's action.

Suicide is an immediate and permanent solution to pain.  The pain can be either physical or emotional: emotional pain of an intensity sufficient to drive the sufferer to consider suicide often manifest itself in physical symptoms so powerful that to quibble about origin is beside the point. Pain is pain regardless of its source. None of these conditions can necessarily be conquered by willpower; neither are they induced by laziness, lack of moral ethic, or selfishness.  

In my mind I had accused my mother of these failings many times. Now, my own experience had taught me a different and quite simple lesson: suicide is a synonym for escape…She had sought death because she believed she had no alternative. A life of pain is not a life worth living. She was not a coward, but instead a realist.

After reading these words, I can't help but wonder how much is applicable to our beloved Josh. He was not at risk for suicide, so we and his psychologist thought but obviously he was. What haunts me is this: what internal pain did he suffer from and for how long?

Her words about the root cause (depression), reminds me of William Styron's short powerful memoir, Darkenss Visible - see post for thoughts.

My mother died of depression. Untreatable, unceasing depression. Why, when we refer to depression, do we think of it in the main as a state characterized by numbness and low spirits rather than intense suffering? Why, in fact, is the word pain rarely used when describing depression? The dictionary uses synonyms such as melancholy, despondency, and sadness.

These are relevant questions at the time of publication in 1994 and now, twenty years later.

Before Josh's death, I was naive and uneducated in the topics of mental illness, depression and suicide. I did not know the signs of depression/suicide, leaving it to the "experts".  Now, I cringe whenever I see the list of signs because at least half can be ticked off as applicable to Josh.

This fuels our mission of The Josh Anderson Foundation: to "provide teenagers with the mental health education, resources and support so that they will never turn to suicide."

Teenagers because they may be their own last line of defense but also parents and teachers, coaches and youth leaders.  We all need to come together to stop Death's tool from taking any more young lives.

Poem: "Separation" by W. S. Merwin

As mentioned in earlier posts, poetry has been a source of comfort on my grief journey.  This should not be a surprise, according to W. S. Merwin, U. S. Poet Laureate (2010 - 2011):

Prose is something, but poetry is about what can't be said.  Why do people turn to poetry when all of a sudden the Twin Towers get hit, or when their marriage breaks up, or when the person they love most in the world drops dead in the same room?  Because they can't say it.  They can't say it at all, and they want something that addresses what can't be said. 

I found this quote underneath his picture in The Poets Laureate Anthology, bought back in March but not opened until a few days ago.

And was blown away by his three line poem below.

Separation

by W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched in its color.

I have read this over and over - so profound, so poignant - capturing truth in a succinct, compressed way.  Josh's death, his absence from my life, from our family is a color that permeates everything.  What we've done, what we do now, and what will be done in the future - the color of his absence will weave through. 

This is why it is impossible to "get over it" - his absence is a part of the air I breathe, part of the space I move in.  It is ingrained in my conscious and subconscious; part of what makes me, me.

August 18, 2014 - 5 Years and 5 Month Later: Quote from "The Namesake"

I've recently finished Jhumpa Lahiri's poignant novel: The Namesake, and want to quote from the end (not to worry; there are no spoilers).

In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another……And yet these events have formed Golgol, shaped him, determined who he is.  They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend.  Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.

EXACTLY….this describes my life with Josh's death…actions and consequences…one thing led to another and before we knew it, he was gone.

An unexpected, tragic death - especially of a child - has no comparison in terms of the ginormous, heavy imprint on a mother's life, psyche and being.  Especially when it never should have happened.

And yes, I feel the compassionate, omniscient narrator is correct in articulating that my whole life was, is and will be about accepting, interpreting and comprehending what happened.  I will also add "process" and "integrate" to the list.  A lifelong endeavor that has no blueprint, no instruction manual, no "How to Deal With the Death of Your Child For Dummies" - the lonely journey begins the millisecond the brain comprehends the unthinkable.

I envision this journey like floating on a river.  "Pre-Josh", this river was fairly calm with some turbulence due to what was going on with him at the time (see post for details) but certainly nothing unmanageable or out-of-control.   But when I realized that our beloved Josh was gone for good, it felt like out of nowhere, an immense, terrifying waterfall was in front and down was the only way I could go.

The fall could kill.  Surviving is a feat.

Then comes the realization that one has forever left the calm river with manageable turbulence for a completely different route, this grief journey - full of angry, churning white water, huge boulders, terrific undercurrents that alternately suck you under and let you go and tributaries which spit you out in whirlpools called Unbelief, Guilt, Regret, Sorrow, Shame and Anger - pools that spin you around in one place for seemingly forever before propelling your battered body to another dizzying vortex.

It is a disorienting, frightening journey that occurs in the depths of one's soul and is very difficult to understand, much less describe to others.  This is what makes the journey a lonely one.

But now, five years later, my journey is on calmer waters and I've occasionally found myself in the pools of Acceptance and Peace.  Visits here do not last but at least I've found them.  For a long time, I questioned their existence or if I would ever experience them.

So to get back to the quote, the narrator says that in the end, the event that was the mistake or accident or thing that should never have happened becomes that which prevails and endures.

Prevails and endures for the departed and those left behind.

RIP Josh….

July 18, 2014 - Five Years and 4 Months Later

We are in out 6th summer sans Josh - so hard to believe!  I daydream what it would be like if he were here - would he be done with college or on the "extended track" like some of his friends?  Either way, being home this summer, I see him lazing around in our pool, watching sports with his dad (World Cup, Red Sox), filling our normally still home with his quiet but vibrant energy.  Of course, our phone and car insurance bills would be higher but that is OK.  (Contacting such companies to remove your child is one of the most painful post-death chores).

As quickly as this fantasy life fills my mind, the pain hits because I know it is not real and never will be.

I recently listed to a poignant audiobook memoir of a young woman's own grief journey after the unexpected death of her health conscious mother from late-stage lung cancer at the age of 45.  I would highly recommend Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed (2012).  The overwhelming grief led Strayed to hike the less traveled but equally formidable west coast counterpart to the Appalachian Trail, in an attempt to process and internalize her personal tragedy and loss.

In her travels, she encountered many people, both on the trail and off, whose interactions and stories impacted her in some way.  I can relate to the pain of one such person so much that while listening in the car on the way back from a business trip, unchecked tears streamed down my face.

Lou had picked Cheryl up hitchhiking and had a picture of a young boy hanging from her rear view mirror.  When asked who he was, Lou simply said it was her son, Luke, who had died 5 years ago at the age of eight.  He was hit by a truck while riding his bike and died five days later.

Lou told Cheryl the following:

After that happened, I died too.  Inside.  I look the same, but I'm not the same in here.  I mean, life goes on and all that crap, but Luke dying took it out of me.  I try not to act like it, but it did.  It took the Lou out of Lou, and I ain't getting it back. 

It has been five years for me and I feel exactly the same way.

RIP Josh - love you and miss you.

4 Years and 11 Months Later - Poem: Grief by C.K. Williams

The tragic deaths of two high school boys two weeks ago have brought back memories of our own loss which occurred almost five years ago.  Can it be that long already?  In some ways, it does feel like a lifetime ago but at other times, it feels like yesterday.

During that difficult week, while thinking about the two boys and our son, I turned to poetry - specifically, an anthology edited by Kevin Young called The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief & Healing.

These are excerpts from Grief by C.K. Williams.  Although it is about the poet's grief over his mother's death, there is much about the feeling of grief in the first few terrible days that is universal.

Is this grief?  Tears took me, then ceases; the wish to die, too, may have fled through me,
but not more than with any moment's despair, the old, surging wish to be freed, finished.
I feel pain, ….even pain for myself, my incomprehension, my fear of stories never begun now, never ending.

But still, is this grief: waking too early, tiring too quickly, distracted, impatient, abrupt,
but still waking, still thinking and working; is this what grief is, is this pain enough?
I go to the mirror: someone who might once have felt something merely regards me,
eyes telling nothing, mouth saying nothing, nothing reflected but the things of the world,
nothing told not of any week's, no, already ten days now, any ten days' normal doings.

Shouldn't the face evidence anguish, shouldn't its loving sadness and loss be revealed?
Ineffable, vague, elusive, uncertain, distracted: shouldn't grief have a form of its own,
and shouldn't mind know past its moment of vague, uncertain distraction and sureness of sorrow;
shouldn't soul flinch as we're taught proper souls are supposed to, in reverence and fear?
Shouldn't grief be pure and complete, reshaping the world in itself, in grief for itself?

My face beneath your face, face of grief, countenance of loss, of fear, of irrevocable extinction;
matrix laid upon matrix, mystery on mystery, guise upon guise, semblance, effigy, likeness.
Oh; to put the face of grief on in the morning; the tinting, smoothing, shining and shaping;
and at the end of the day, to remove it, detach it, emerge from the sorrowful mask.

Stripped now of its raiment, the mouth, caught in its last labored breath, finds last resolution;
all the flesh now, stripped of its guises, moves towards its placed in the peace of the earth.
Grief for the earth, accepting the grief of the flesh and the grief of our grieving forever;
grief for the flesh and the body and face, for the eyes that can see only into the world,
and the mind that can only think and feel what the world gives it to think and feel;
grief for the mind gone, the flesh gone, the imperfect pain that must stay for its moment;
and grief for the moment, its partial beauties, its imperfect affections, all severed, all torn.

RIP Josh.  I envision you have found these boys and are showing them the ropes in the world you now inhabit.  One day - we will be together again.

January 18, 2014 - 4 Years and 10 Months - Afterlife?

A lot happens in a short time frame: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Josh's birthday and another month anniversary that now brings us ever closer to the 5th year anniversary on March 18th.   In years past, these months were very hard as each holiday was a blistering reminder of our loss.

But this year, instead of feeling constant grief with the occasional respite, I felt more at peace with the occasional grief flare-up.  Maybe it is because of some new thoughts regarding the afterlife, the reality of heaven, and the idea that Josh's spirit is very much alive.

Last month, while in Dulles airport waiting to board a flight, I wandered into a bookstore and came across the book, My Son and The Afterlife by Elisa Medhus, MD.  After reading the blurb on the back cover below, I had the strong feeling that Josh led me to it.  So not only did I get the book, but devoured it within a couple of days.

Dr. Elisa Medhus never believed in life after death.  As an accomplished physician, she placed her faith in science.  All of that changed after her son Erik took his own life and then reached out from the other side. 

Intimate, heartbreaking, and illuminating, go on an incredible journey from grief and skepticism to healing and belief.  Based on Medhus' wildly popular blog, ChannelingErik, My Son and the Afterlife provides answers to the most universal questions of being human. 

At once tragic and uplifting, Erik speaks from the other side with candor, wisdom, and depth as he describes his own experiences and provides new answers about the nature of souls, death, and the afterlife - answers that have the potential to change our lives forever.

Erik died on October 6, 2009 - almost 7 months after Josh.  Have they met?  I wonder.

The book is essentially a transcript of her questions and his answers (via medium).  It is information overload: strange, surreal, and difficult to process.   The following bullet points are what I wrote in my book journal:

• Afterlife is a reality
• Our two-dimensional (space and time) are a very small part of the overall reality
• Souls depart the physical body upon death but retain their essence, memories, everything that makes them unique.
• Souls want to remain connected to their loved ones on earth and are able to give signs, play pranks, show themselves and communicate - click here to read about our signs from Josh.
• Reincarnation exists
• Unconditional love for ourselves and others is the ultimate goal of being human
• This energy, life-force, soul, spirit exists in all living things: humans, plants, animals

Along with Dr. Eban Alexander's book, Proof of Heaven that I read last summer, there is much to ponder.

Then last weekend, when Tim and I went to see Savings Mr. Banks, we saw the preview of Heaven is for Real, based on a true story in which a young boy experienced heaven in a NDE (near death experience) - see their web site for a video interview with Colton and his parents.   It is amazing.

As I process this information, I find the bitterness and anger lessening, being replaced with nascent...unusual feelings of hope and peace.  I feel more assurance that Josh is in a better place and is hopefully doing just fine.

. 

4 Years and 4 Months: Dead But Not Dead

My grief journey has taken a very unexpected turn in terms of my reading.  For the past nine months, after reading Winter of the World, an engrossing novel about World War II by Ken Follett, I have been obsessed.

Since then, I have read or listened to 25 books on WWII:  biographies, memoirs, historical fiction, non-fiction and have watched the two HBO series Band of Brothers and The Pacific and as well as Hollywood's renditions of the war: War and Remembrance, Patton, Midway and Memphis Belle.  I have ordered 17 more books from Amazon and have another 20 books on my wish list.  I have never been interested in history, much less military history before now.

Why the fascination?  And how does this relate to my grief journey, knowing that somehow it must?

I find the first question easier to answer; in fact, the following bullet points are what I wrote on the first page of my WWII study journal:

• This war spanned the entire globe - it was a true world-wide conflict.
• It was a two front war against Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan.
• Transformation of the United States was unprecedented from an isolationist country to full and total commitment to war as we would only accept full and unconditional surrender of the enemy - no peace negotiations. 
• Enormous sacrifice of human life.
• Countless inspiring stories of valor and courage.
• Sometimes, the outcomes of battles came down to pure luck.
• War politics personified in the larger-than-life Big Three: Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.
• War and larger-than-life generals: Eisenhower, MacArthur, Rommel, Montgomery.
• War and citizen soldiers: college students, farm boys, salesmen, factory workers - regular "Joes" turned soldier.
• Homefront in war - changes in the workforce primarily for women and Negroes.
• Holocaust 
• Post war - the "Greatest Generation".  What did they do? How did they fare?
• Post war politics: Cold War to Korean War to Vietnam War

I think the answer to the second question, "How does this relate to my grief journey?" can be found in my September 2012 post: "He Who Learns Must Suffer".

I wrote that reading drama by the four greatest tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare) was cathartic.  I also noted that while my external life had contracted to a small circle, my internal world had expanded with the exploration of ancient Greek and Elizabethan literature.

Since then, my mind's eye has jumped centuries to the greatest drama of human history: World War II.  And instead of reading about characters created from imagination, I am learning about real life heroes and heroines - about the grisly business of war and how in the midst of either witnessing or experiencing unspeakable horror, one can keep their human dignity and find the resilience and fortitude to keep going.

The cathartic affect is still a paradox: i.e how can reading about someone else's pain and suffering cause a purging, cleansing and connection to my own deep feelings?

In recent days, I have been drawn to the classic memoirs of two Marines who fought in the Pacific Theatre, Helmut for My Pillow by Robert Leckie and With the Old Breed by E. B Sledge.  These brave men were featured in Tom Hanks/Steven Spielburg's HBO mini-series, The Pacific. 

The title of this post comes from a quote in Leckie's book as he ruminates on a post-battle scene in Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain.

I stood among the heaps of dead.  They lay crumpled, useless, defunct.  The vital force was fled.  A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels and the substance had leaked out.  The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a special habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas.  They had been so different, then.  Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing.  Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this?  Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul - does this spill out on the ground along with the blood?  No.  It is somewhere, I know it.  For this red-and-yellow lump I look down upon this instant was once a man, and the thing that energized him, the Word that gave "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," the Word from a higher Word - this cannot have been obliterated by a quarter-inch of heated metal.  The mystery of the universe has departed him, and it is no good to say that the riddle is solved, the mystery is over - because it has changed residences.   The thing that shaped the flare of that nostril, that broadened that arm now bleeding, that wrought so fine that limply lying hand - that thing exists still, and has still the power to flare that nostril, to bend that arm, to clench that fist exactly as it did before.  

Because it is gone you cannot say it will not return; even though you may say it has never yet returned - you cannot say that it will not.  It is blasphemy to say a bit of metal has destroyed life, just as it is presumptuous to say that because life has disappeared it has been destroyed.  I stood among the heaps of the dead and I knew - no, I felt that death is only a sound we make to signify the Thing we do not know. 

This is a profound thought written by one who, after looking at the dead; no, really, deeply looking at them, contemplates what has occurred and after deep reflection, is convinced that a piece of metal cannot destroy the "mystery of the universe" that resides within our earthly vessels, nor can a plain, brown extension cord.

Said another way, just because life has disappeared or no longer inhabits the flesh, it does not mean that it has been obliterated or destroyed.  How this works, I do not know but I believe it.

I wrote the following in my journal:

Death is not the end but rather the beginning of another beginning. 

or 

Death is not the end but the transition to another form of living.

And perhaps the living bears some responsibility for as long as our loved ones are remembered, they stay alive.   I underlined this passage from Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize winning book, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in  World War II.  This little verse, given to Eleanor by a friend after FDR's sudden death, encouraged her to "make the rest of her life worthy of her husband's memory.  As long as she continued to fight for his ideals, he would continue to live."

"They are not dead who live in lives they leave behind.  In those whom they have blessed they live a life again."

RIP Josh.
You remain alive in our hearts.

4 Years and 2 Months - Chronos vs. Kairos Time

My 5th Mother's Day, sans Josh, has passed.  I didn't expect to feel sad the day before but sure enough, on the way to teach my morning cycle class, I started thinking about Josh and next thing I knew, big fat tears were rolling down my cheeks.  I only had a few stoplights to get myself together and in the right frame of mind to lead an energetic workout.

Grief is like that sometimes: a spigot that suddenly turns on and with much effort, can be turned off.

I have been thinking a lot about the concept of time after reading a profound passage in Styron's haunting novel, Sophie's Choice where the protagonist Stingo quotes George Steiner, an essayist who wrote about the Holocaust and more specifically, about the disconnect between the horrors faced in German concentration camps and normal life experienced by millions of others, within the same timeframe - see link for actual essay.

Precisely at the same hour in which Mehring and Langner were being done to death, the overwhelming plurality of human beings, two miles away on the Polish farms, five thousand miles away in New York, were sleeping or eating or going to a film or making love or worrying about the dentist.  This is where my imagination balks. The two orders of simultaneous experience are so different, so irreconcilable to any common norm of human values, their coexistence is so hideous a paradox, Treblinka is both because some men have built it and almost all other men let it be - that I puzzle over time.  Are there, as science fiction and Gnostic speculation imply, different species of time in the same world, 'good time' and enveloping folds of inhuman time in which men fall into the slow hands of the living damnation?

In the margins I wrote: Different species of time in the same world?  Yes!  Grief time vs. normal time. 

I felt this disassociation the split second my eyes saw death and my heart, soul and psyche comprehended our new reality.  I began living in two genres of time.  In my world, the sun stopped, echoing my zombie-like feelings and exemplified the un-natural state of life.  Externally, the sun and moon exchanged places, as per usual.  This is what is hard - the "as per usual" piece.   It was incomprehensible that everything continued as normal: neighbors still walked their dogs, kids got on the school bus, people went to work, shopping, to the gym.  How can you act as if nothing has happened? I wanted to shout.

In doing some research, I found this helpful article: How Long is This Grieving Going to Last? by Elizabeth Harper Neeld on Legacy.com.  In it she talks about two kinds of time:

Chronos time- chronological time.  "Measured by a calendar.  Chronos time is counted in days, weeks, months, years.  Chronos time describes a continuum of past, present, and future."

Kairos time - "the time within which personal life moves forward.  Kairos is an ordered but unmeasured kind of time outside of space-time."

She says that the integration of our grief takes place in kairos time, not chronos time so that "the mere passing of days and weeks and months and years does not within itself bring integration of our loss."  Furthermore Neeld postulates that this kairos time is longer than what non-grievers will think.

So true!  This thinking is exposed with unhelpful comments such as "It's been a year - you should be feeling better by now" or "give it a few months and you will feel better."

Another google search brought up this blog post, The One Greek Word You Ought to Know by J.R.Briggs.   These quotes bring more clarity to these Greek descriptions of time:

Chronos is quantitative minutes. Kairos is qualitative moments. 

Kairos is pregnant time, the time of possibility – moments in our day, our week, our month, our year or our lifetime that define us. It is a crossroads. It has the ripe opportunity to make you bitter or better. It is a teachable moment. It is the right or opportune moment. They are rarely neutral and always leave an impact on us.

and:

Kairos moments are a string of moments that possess possibility – clarity brought on often by pain, uncertainty or crisis. They force us to be absolutely present: to ourselves, to God and to the experience of reality that we’re facing.

and the bottom line:

As human beings, all of our growth happens in kairos moments.

Personal reflections from my journal:

Chronos time:  Four years and two months.

Kairos time:  this is what my journal and this blog have chronicled.  Or better said, this blog, my reading blog, my journal are all critical to my kairos time - tools to help me integrate my loss.  Chronos time just marks points of kairos time, like mileposts on a road - a very long road - a lifetime road, what I have called My Grief Journey. 

Intuitively, I know this journey is not bound by physical time (chronos) but is internal, personal, subjective.  There will be epiphanies, setbacks, ruts, obstacles, wrong turns, U-turns, hairpin turns, bumps, potholes, hills, valleys and maybe mountain tops.

I will end this post with Neeld's thought-provoking questions and uplifting conclusion:

"What insights have I had? What have I realized? What meaning am I making of this terrible loss?"

The good news is that healthy grieving does result, at the time right for each of us, an experience of integration. We take stock and say: I am changed by our loss, and I have changed my live as a result of my loss. And we are not shriveled permanently like a dry stick because of our loss. We can feel alive again…probably wiser, maybe quieter, certainly full of gratitude and a desire to contribute from what we have been through. 

And all in good time. All in good kairos time.

Guilt and Regret - April 28, 2013

This is an example of how reading good literature makes me face difficult thoughts and feelings that might otherwise be unexplored.

I have been slowly making my way through Sophie's Choice by William Styron.  Slowly because of the number of new words to look up, define and write in my personal lexicon and also, to savor the gorgeous prose, just like one would deliberately slow down to enjoy a delicious dessert.

Sophie, the hauntingly beautiful protagonist is consumed by guilt.  The writer-narrator Stingo is witness and describes it as:

Guilt. Hateful guilt. Guilt, corrosive as brine.  Like typhoid, one can harbor for a lifetime the toxin of guilt. 

In another part, Stingo personifies his lust in a way that puts the reader in the body of a virile twenty-two year old male virgin, completely obsessed with sex.

Combining these two ideas made me think of how I would personify my feelings, namely Guilt and Regret.   This is what I wrote in my journal:

Guilt and Regret - like two peas in a pod; siamese twins, joined at the hip.  When one shows up, the other comes by default.  I wonder if there will be any point in my grief journey when Guilt will part for good, taking up residence with another poor soul; when I will be able to say clearly and soberly that I did all that I knew to do, that Josh did this to himself and therefore, I am not at fault?  I wonder.

There are moments now when these absolving thoughts float through my head but always, either softly in the background, or loudly in my ears, Guilt says, "No!  You should've known, seeing it coming, been on your guard, questioned him, talked to him......prevented his death."

Then Regret chimes in with her soliloquy which repeats like a broken record, unable to get out of the verbal rut: "what if...if only... would've....could've...should've..."

I endure their mental flogging as just punishment for not being a good mother, for although I tried to be,  I was not attentive enough, not what he needed me to be and now my Josh is dead - ergo, my fault.

I've come to accept Guilt and Regret's tenacious hold for it is the price of motherhood.  Moms protect.  Moms guard.  Moms are willing to die in order to save their children.  Moms are not supposed to outlive their precious offspring.  Good moms do not have a child who takes their own life.

So deep down, I believe Guilt and Regret words:

I should've been different.
I should've been better.
I should've seen something - a sign - even when no one else did.
I should've known and so been able to prevent his death.

And what it really comes down to is this most painful thought:

If Josh had a different mom, maybe he would be alive.

Original Poem: "Work of the Living"

On a recent business trip to Norfolk, VA, I wandered into a local bookstore and found an anthology of poems edited by Harold Bloom called Till I End My Song: A Gathering of Last Poems.

These last phrases are taken from a particularly poignant poem by A. R. Ammons called "In View of the Fact."

...until we die we will remember every
single thing, recall every word, love every 

loss: then we will, as we must, leave it to
others to love, love that can grow brighter 

and deeper till the very end, gaining strength
and getting more precious all the way....

In the margins I wrote, "work of the living" which then brought my mind back to the work we had to do after the awful discovery. 

Work of the Living

by Sue Anderson

When the dead die,

     their job is done.

Not so with the living

    whose labor has just begun.

Unfair, unsolicited work

    is thrust on the living,

While the dead rest:

    calm, at peace, in a sleep-like state.

Not so for us:

    people to call,

    explanations to make,

    family to greet,

    friends to hug.

The house swells with those

    coming to do their job:

    Remember the dead.

To do lists:

    funeral to arrange,

    service to organize,

    casket to choose,

    burial ground to pick,

    pictures to sort,

    final clothes to gather.

While the dead rest

    and wait for their final hurrah,

    calm, oblivious to all.

Not to mention the tears,

    floodgates open.

Who knew the volume of brine

    that could come from within?

Grief

    she is a relentless taskmaster;

    non-existent in the past,

    omnipresent now.

Do the dead know

    what work has been place on their loved ones?

If they knew, would they have:

    jumped,

    shot,

    swallowed,

    sliced or

    hung?

Over time; however, 

    the work does lessen.

The load seems lighter,

    the burden status quo.

The job now is to light the candle

    of eternal remembrance,

Letting it shine in the world's dark spaces,

    to prevent other such deaths.

It is our job now,

    24/7.

NEVER FORGET

"He Who Learns Must Suffer" (Aeschylus)

In a recent journal entry, I wrote, "I feel as though I am shriveling up inside."  This doesn't sound very healthy and to be honest, surprised me so I continued writing....

I feel like I am slowly shriveling up inside - or better said, contracting within myself - bringing the world around me into a close circle: my home, my family, my work and that's about it.  My "people world" is very small and only by necessity.  Truthfully, I find being with people and making conversation, exhausting.     

But my internal world has expanded for I have gone back in time, all the way to the ancient Greek and Roman writers, and to Shakespeare in the Elizabethan time and have found a newly discovered genre, tragedy, from which to garner meaning around our own tragic experience. 

In my journal, I did reflect that Tim has continued seeking and expanding his external world which is fine - just another way that we have handled our grief differently.

So my physical world has contracted but my mental world has expanded, via my reading.  For in the past few months I have read the following works:

• The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer
• The Aeneid by Virgil
• All seven extant plays by Greek tragedian, Sophocles
• The first play, Agamemnon, in the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus
• The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton
• Seven major tragedies of Shakespeare

To supplement my reading, I have checked out from my local library and listened to several audio courses from The Teaching Company; my favorites being on The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid  by Professor Elizabeth Vandiver.

What is it about these ancient works that have spoken to me, touched my heart and have provided inspiration, guidance and just plain "food for thought"?  I think it is summed up in the following quote:

God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer.  And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.   

(Aeschylus in Agamemnon, quoted by Edith Hamilton in The Greek Way).

The works of the four greatest tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare) have explored the depths of human pain and suffering and the resulting dignity, resiliency and fortitude of the human spirit.  Lessons abound in these works.  And Aristotle is right - a catharsis does occur when reading or viewing tragedy, which is a difficult paradox to explain.  How is it that I feel purged, cleansed or more connected to my own deep feelings when I see or read about the suffering of others?

I googled the beginning of the above quote and found a talk given by Herbert Golder to The Alpha Omega Counsel in January 2010 called The Greek Invention of the Human.   Of special interest was the part where he talks about how Jackie Kennedy gave her brother-in-law, Bobby, a copy of The Greek Way, saying it was one of JFK's favorite books.  Bobby had been devastated by his brother's assassination and was unable to find solace anywhere.  This book helped so much that he took it everywhere, memorizing the quote from Agamemnon.   Just what did Kennedy find in the Greeks?  The same thing I did.

A civilization eager to look death in the face, but one that seemed to draw strength from what it found there.  The more the ancient Greeks pondered the transience and fragility and pain of human life, the more convinced they became of its dignity and its significance...So what Kennedy found in the Greeks was an ethos that embraced the tragic complexity of life and didn't back away from it, that wasn't afraid of it, embraced it, but drew strength from it and not defeat....Freedom to choose - the courage, the manner, and the dignity with which one confronts that fate; to turn death, to which we are all bound, into destiny. 

I wrote these quotes from Golder's talk in my journal because they express the relevance of the ancient works to our times, for despite how different my life is to those who lived in the 5th century BC or in Shakespeare's time, our hearts and souls are the same.

Here is a list of posts from my reading:

Dec 12, 2011 -  Quote from Romeo and Juliet
Feb 12, 2012 - Book review: Macbeth by Shakespeare
Feb. 26, 2012 - Thoughts for grieving parents from Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet
Feb 26, 2012 - Teenage suicidal ideation in Romeo and Juliet
March 31, 2012 - Book review - The Iliad of Homer
June 5, 2012 - Death, grief and suicide in Hamlet - Part I
June 8. 2012 - Death, grief and suicide in Hamlet - Part II
June 23, 2012 - The grief of Achilles in The Iliad
July 28, 2012 - Book review - Othello by Shakespeare
July 29, 2012 - Book review - Oedipus the King by Sophocles
July 29, 2012 - Book review: The Aeneid by Virgil

RIP Josh. I am learning through my suffering but it has come at a horrible cost.  I would gladly give it all back and be my old ignorant self - to have you here.

Three Years and Five Months Later - August 18, 2012

I am off this weekend to move Gillian to NYC.  Too bad Josh were not here; he would enjoy a short weekend in the city, seeing his baby cousin and eating lunch at Katz - he loved their pastrami sandwiches. 

I want to share another poem from Billy Collins - it is actually the one that titles the collection.

Horoscopes for the Dead
by Billy Collins

Every morning since you disappeared for good, 

I read about you in the daily paper

along with the box scores, the weather, and all the bad news. 

Some days I am reminded that today

will not be a wildly romantic time for you,

nor will you be challenged by educational goals,

nor will you need to be circumspect at the workplace.

Another day, I learn that you should not miss

an opportunity to travel and make new friends

though you never cared much about either. 

I can't imagine you ever facing a new problem

with a positive attitude, but you will definitely not

be doing that, or anything like that, on this weekday in March.

And the same goes for the fun

you might have gotten from group activities,

a likelihood attributed to everyone under your sign.

A dramatic rise in income may be a reason

to treat yourself, but that would apply 

more to all the Pisces who are still alive,

still swimming up and down the stream of life

or suspended in a pool in the shade of an overhanging tree.

But you will be relieved to learn

that you no longer need to reflect carefully before acting,

nor do you have to think more of others,

and never again will creative work take a back seat

to the business responsibilities that you never really had.

And don't worry today or any day

about problems caused by your unwillingness

to interact rationally with your many associates.

No more goals for you, no more romance,

no more money or children, jobs or important tasks,

but then again, you were never thus encumbered.

So leave it up to me now

to plan carefully for success and the wealth it may bring,

to value the dear ones close to my heart,

and to welcome any intellectual stimulation that comes my way

though that sounds like a lot to get done on a Tuesday.

I am better off closing the newspaper,

putting on the clothes I wore yesterday

(when I read that your financial prospects were looking up)

then pushing off on my copper-colored bicycle

and pedaling along the shore road by the bay.

And you stay just as you are,

lying there in your beautiful blue suit,

your hands crossed on your chest

like the wings of a bird who has flown

in its strange migration not north or south

but straight up from earth

and pierced the enormous circle of the zodiac.

Josh - I wish you were still swimming in the "stream of life" with us and all your friends.  We miss you.   

Poem: "Grave" by Billy Collins

We are on vacation - our fourth without Josh.  I keep thinking what he would be doing if he were with us.  For example - would he have gotten up to play morning rounds of golf or hiked the mountain or would he have wanted to sleep in?  Probably the latter.   I know he would've loved The Dark Knight Rises, the new Batman movie that Gillian and I saw yesterday.  We did some shopping at the outlet stores before the movie; it is still hard for me to walk through the men's section in places like The Gap.   There are too many things that I can picture him wearing. 

While at a bookstore in Wellesley, MA, the title of a collection of poems, Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins caught my eye.  He was the US Poet Laureate from 2001 - 2003 and the Poet Laureate of NY from 2004 - 2006.  His poems are refreshingly accessible; written about everyday events in everyday language, albeit in surprising, witty and whimsical ways.

This is the first poem in the collection - poignant and touching.

Grave

by Billy Collins

What do you think of my new glasses

I asked as I stood under a shade tree

before the joined grave of my parents,

and what followed was a long silence

that descended on the rows of the dead

and on the fields and the woods beyond,

one of the one hundred kinds of silence

according to the Chinese belief,

each one distinct from the others,

but the differences being so faint

that only a few special monks

were able to tell them all apart.

They make you look very scholarly,

I heard my mother say

once I lay down on the ground

and pressed an ear into the soft grass.

Then I rolled over and pressed

my other ear to the ground,

the ear my father likes to speak into,

but he would say nothing,

and I could not find a silence

among the 100 Chinese silences

that would fit the one that he created

even though I was the one

who had just made up the business

of the 100 Chinese silences -

the Silence of the Night Boat

and the Silence of the Lotus, 

cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell

only deeper and softer, like petals, at its farthest edges.


RIP Josh - forever loved and missed.

"Pain Is The Great Teacher" - Three Years and Four Months Later

Last month, I found a new genre of books which closely resemble the memoir; it is published diaries.   I read a few books about such journal writers - see this post if interested.

In one such book, The Hidden Writer: Diaries and the Creative Life, Alexandra Johnson focuses on the lives and journals of a few - the one whom I quote below is May Sarton; a struggling poet and novelist who became famous later in life for her published diary, Journal of a Solitude. 

Pain is the great teacher.  I woke before dawn with this thought.  Joy, happiness, are what we take and do not question.  They are beyond question, maybe.  A matter of being.  But pain forces us to think, and to make connections, to sort out what is what, to discover what has been happening to cause it.  And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.

I like this quote very much; it is succinct and feels true.  What can be learnt from joy or happiness?  As she says, they are states of being that we may aspire to obtain but then what?  Once there, isn't it simply a matter of enjoying and hoping to prolong that state of bliss?

Pain is a different story.  Pain is the great teacher.  I think of physical pain first.  When everything in the body is functioning as it should, we are pain-free.  Again, nothing to learn.  But when there is pain, we know something is wrong and are motivated to address it.  X-rays, MRI's, CAT scans can disclose the culprit.  The cause and effect is more readily seen.  If the ankle is broken, one cannot walk.

Then I think of mental and emotional pain - internal pain of the mind, of the interior, of the soul.  The symptoms are more vague and often hard to describe.  How does one accurately depict what is going on inside their head?  Their feelings?  In a way that others can understand?    I feel bad, I feel sad, I feel empty, my mind won't stop racing, I feel someone has high-jacked my mind, etc. 

It is this internal pain, within teens, that the Josh Anderson Foundation wants to acknowledge and address: by broadcasting loud and clear that it is OK to be open with their feelings and the craziness that sometimes spins around in their head;  by busting the mental health stigma that traps them into silent suffering; by letting them know where and to whom they can turn to for help.  All this so that NO other child will turn to suicide as THE solution to their pain.

My last thought on this is that pain does cause solidarity.  A brotherhood.  Suffering alone intensifies the pain.  Shared pain is lessened pain.  This is why people gather at funerals.  Why so many kids came to Josh's memorial service; they all felt pain and wanted to be with others that felt the same way.  And seeing all of them lessened mine. It was a cathartic gathering that provided the opportunity to say a collective "good-bye" to a beloved son and friend.

RIP Josh.  I am so sorry that we did not see your pain, that you could not share your pain with us and that this pain became so excruciating and unbearable that you could not see a way out.   I wish I had known - I would have helped you through it.  And I know many others would have been willing helpers too.

All Sorrow Feels Ancient - All Death Feels New

I recently came across one of the most profound sentences in all my reading since Josh's death.  It was not from the actual book, Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels - which I quickly looked up on Amazon and Goodreads, saw enough that interested me and have downloaded the sample onto my iPad - but rather, was included in a list of simple sentences in Priscilla Long's book, The Writer's Portable Mentor.

All sorrow feels ancient.

Only four words which rings so true.  Why?  What is this "ancient sorrow"? These were the questions I sought to answer in my journal.

I envision this "ancient sorrow" like a wide moving river, flowing through time and space, generations and centuries, across cultures and species, picking up all sorrow in its wake.  And I'd like to presume that this "ancient sorrow" is the most intense, the most constant, the deepest and harshest when connected to the loss of a child.

I was oblivious to its existence but no more.  Intimate with it now - I am floating on it, living in it, and have been drinking from it daily, for over three years.  This "ancient sorrow" fills me up and I know that each day, others' sorrow adds to it.

Which brings me to my next thought: Death is inevitable.  One day, life will end.  It is a known fact, a reality.  But for some reason, despite the millions of people who have already "passed away", this intimate, carnal knowledge of death is unknown.  One cannot really "know" how it will feel - the loss of a loved one - until it happens to you.  We can read about it, watch movies, listen to songs and even be moved to tears but will not really know it until we experience it first-hand.

Why?  This seems very cruel. Why can't an ancient knowledge and understanding of death be imparted to us, down through the generations so that when it happens, we might have some familiarity, some understanding, some comprehension to help us navigate through the intense emotions?  Instead, we are left to our own devices: to struggle, weather and survive the impact of an emotionally destructive tidal wave, tsunami or hurricane - for that is how loss feels.

Yes, to quote Anne Michaels again, "All sorrow feels ancient."  What I will add is this:  All death feels new.

RIP beloved Josh.