"Merry" Christmas

       "Merry Christmas!" I have learned to accept the good intentions of my friends and to echo the words back to them, even though I know that my Christmas won't be exactly merry. Some of it can be pleasant, happy, or even joyful. At its best, each Christmas will have moments of sadness and reflection. Being merry means being in a jovial state, and I don't think I'll be spending any long tenures being merry.
        The first Christmas after our first son died was absolutely devastating. I also cringed, and probably visibly, whenever anyone wished me a merry Christmas that year. The second year was better and finally I settled in to acceptance of the good intentions of others. Last Christmas, the first one after our other son died, was also very difficult, and this year is somewhat better. Perhaps this year was better because of predictability.

        I would like to understand how "merriment " came to be a part of the recognition of Christmas. The song "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" shouldn't be the basis for the word because it obviously had a different meaning with the song's origin. "God rest ye merry" is obviously archaic, and of course it doesn't wish ladies anything at all.

       I won't be merry on Christmas. I think I'll be okay. I know I'll be happy and will laugh and enjoy the day, complete with its sadness and reflection.

        Most people who say "Merry Christmas" to me know they are wishing me not merriment, but rather the best kind of Christmas possible for me. I am grateful for their sentiment and attention. Others come up to me, and then realize that they aren't comfortable wishing me a Merry Christmas. Usually I just get a hug. I am grateful to them for their sensitivity, and words aren't always necessary.

         But this "Merry Christmas" thing could be examined in more depth. Why do we think everyone should have a merry Christmas? It's not biblical, although being joyous is. Joy, however, is more complex, and to me it includes memories, and hope that is most profound. I am not a theologian, but I have no recall of anyone supporting Jesus that insisted on a party or a day of merry-making.

         I, in fact, have been wondering about the celebration of Christmas as the birthday of Jesus. The angels, visiting wise men and shepherds all celebrated His birth, but there is no mention in the Bible of celebrating His birthday on an annual basis. Of course, we celebrate birthdays as part of our culture today, and even recognize the birthdays of historical figures, so I'm not recommending excluding Jesus. But we don't know when Jesus was born, although it was probably sometime toward the end of the vegetation year, when people could travel for census-taking. We don't know what the date was, but the season of winter would not be the same in Bethlehem as it is in most of the United States. The calendar designation of Christmas was set to coincide with harvest festivities that are not specific to any particular climate.

         What we need to observe is the gift of Jesus not just one day, but every day. W e need to celebrate the lives of our children with all of our family and friends, those living and those who have died. Bereaved parents may or may not have a merry Christmas, but they need to reflect love and promote peace every day in remembrance of their children, and if they are Christians, in the model given by Jesus.

Quote from "The Nightengale"

Quote at the end of a favorite novel...

"My two boys... Because of them I know now what matters, and it is not what I have lost. It is my memories. Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain." - Kristin Hannah, 2015. The Nightengale. Macmillan

Grief Without Judgement

These two beautiful ladies are each over 90 years old and are grieving their children, a married couple in their 60's. Although I wanted to blur their faces more to protect privacy and could not with my current aps, the photo depicts an important message. The loss of a child, even one over the age of 55, represents undue sadness. The grief is wrenching and deep. We should never judge the depth of grief by the age of the child that died, whether an infant, child, teen, young adult, parent, or grandparent.

Dreaming

      I awoke this morning after having vivid Jed dream. Today is exactly 18 months since he died. It seems like no time at all and it seems like an eternity. Perhaps that is what eternity is - a total mixup of how we measure time on earth and time during our lives.
      I am aware of dreams with Jed in them almost every night. Information about dreams indicates that I probably have dreams with him in them several times a night. Usually he is dressed in a white t-shirt, which is odd because I do not remember him wearing white t-shirts during his adult years. In the dreams, he is watching me and the things involving me until he eventually comes forward and gives his own accurate recommendations and advice.
      As usual, I don't remember what I was doing in the dream, nor any other details. I only remember Jed in the background, and then his coming forward to talk to me (or maybe to us). I love the dreams. I love the fact that he is alive to me again, even though it is virtual.
      I don't remember when the dreams with Jay D active in them ended. Of course it has been 23, 11 months, and 14 days since he died. It also seems like no time at all and it seems like an eternity. I simply cannot imagine him as older than 17, and yet, both my husband and I have talked about how we were always unable to envision his future when he was living.
      Jay D is often in my dreams, but only as a child in the background that never comes forward and that doesn't interact, except on very rare occasions. In my dreams, he is always wearing a camouflage print. I would love to have dreams in which Jay D is alive to me again. I did have them for a long time, and I regret not realizing they had stopped.
       Dreams are merely representations of reality. Dreams are virtual. Memories are real, except that the time frame is virtual. I would rather have the memories than the dreams.
      I remember Jay D always being able to reduce feelings and experiences into one wise and simple observation, and I think he was truly gifted in those kinds of perceptions. I remember his dry humor and his moments of enjoyment. He was truly creative. Jed was also very creative but was also a person who strove to learn as many things as he could. His comments and advice was usually right on the mark of being helpful.
      I remember Jay D. as clearly as I remember Jed. I remember the feelings they each evoked and still do. I am so grateful that I am aware of each of them every day.

Love and Life

Life is delicate, fragile, and indeterminate. We have some assumptions about life that lead to profound sadness when we find we are wrong. We believe life continues for 8 - 10 decades. We believe that youth is a pathway to old age. We believe that healthy bodies can overcome all kinds of injury and illness. We believe that the mind should be able to conquer all negative thoughts. And yet, the fiber that is life can break at any time, in countless ways.

In contrast, love is layered, tough, and lasts as long as we desire. We may grow to dislike someone, but deep in our memories, we can find the love we had. Love can change forms. It ranges from admiration and sharing to complicated emotions. Love is a shape-shifter that can adjust to situations, people and even memories. Love is a fiber that weaves itself into a fabric that enfolds each person.

Love is positive. When love hurts, we have only to take a few steps to grab a more suitable kind of love. When we find the kind of love that is most appropriate, we can use it to renew ourselves and our friendships. We can use love to counter hate, misfortune, poverty, inequities and even, after a long time, grief.

When someone dies, we eventually learn to pour our love into the memories we have of that person. It is our comfort and it endures. Life can suddenly shatter. Love never completely shatters. Whether or not we choose to believe in life beyond death, we know for certain that there is love beyond life. We do not stop loving when someone dies.

The best thing we can do, when we have come through deep mourning, is to take love and direct it toward a better family, neighborhood, community, or world.

The Rainy Day

When an infant, child, or young adult dies, people talk of the loss of the future, or of unfulfilled promise, or experiences missed by friends and family. To me, the saddest thing is that the child or young person was so full of the present, so full of each moment, and yes, so full of life.
Whatever the cause of death, whether sudden, suicide, or long illness, the child or young adult does not seem to worry about the future in the same way his or her parents may worry about the future. They are alive in the moment, and their deaths are another moment. Perhaps they consider Heaven to be a rainy day that will someday arrive. Until then, they enjoy the sunshine. Those who observe are taken aback by the fragility of life, by the value of moments, once here, then gone.
Older people often lead lives of remembering and yearning, and frequently wait for death to arrive. They long for the promise of Heaven, and when they die, those who observe speak of the value of accomplishments and experiences that were shared.
The death of an infant, child, or young adult is magical. Before us is a life soaring and filled by the moment, and then it is not longer there. Although it is magical, it is very, very sad.

The Lord Giveth, The Lord Taketh Away

We live, we die. Our child lived. Our child died. We had a loving family. We have a grieving family. The Lord Gives. The Lord Taketh Away. Stop. Just Stop. Usually happiness and sadness are the antithesis of one another, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes a person can be sad within their own happiness, or joyful in their grief. I used to question "The Lord Taketh Away", wondering if God used "taketh away" to teach man a lesson, or to demonstrate some kind of punitive reaction to our lives. Surely, God, with so much power, has control over the lives and deaths of people on this earth. We wonder if God controls death, or is more like a caretaker of death. We need to accept that the world does not function without death, that our grandchildren have no future without death. We think of the phrase as being "The Lord Gives, but the Lord Takes Away." But perhaps we should consider "The Lord Gives AND the Lord Takes Away." For example, the Lord Gives us Joy, and the Lord takes away despair." Perhaps, instead of thinking of God as someone who collects angels, we should think of God as someone who collects and disposes of grief and hopelessness. I'll be editing and probably elaborating on this in the coming days. Right now, it's just some things I was considering.

Taking My Breath Away

There is a jolt to the soul when we experience the death of someone close to us. When it is our child or offspring, we are forever changed and we feel that everything we do, including breathing, is different. We continue to exist, but it is in a different context and we find ourselves wondering if anything - anything besides the death of our child - has any meaning.

The moment of knowledge of that death leaves an indelible mark on our lives. It places a period into the flow of our lives, when we naver wanted anymore than a comma. We give up our breathing for a moment, and then realize that something, most likely our instinct for preservation, has begun our breathing without our recognition.

It isn't just that moment that takes our breath away. It is the recurring moments, the remembering, the reliving, and eventually the recognition that can clearly define the first breath of that child, and the approximate circumstances of the last breath. Perhaps we were not there, but we know that there was indeed one last incident of life, one second in time that transformed that vital, breathing soul into a loved memory.

The birth of each of our three children also took my breath away, and their first cries are indelibly etched in my memory. I was awe-struck by the beginnings of their lives, but each was anticipated for many months.

I was not present when our middle son died, but I stood by the bedside when our oldest son died. Yet, I know that the first death interrupted a happy, vivacious young man who was probably deep in thought about the future minutes, and maybe even his future years. He could be meditative, even quiet, but he left our house that morning with a bounce in his step and laughter on his voice. Others who saw him that morning and early afternoon described his comments about the beautiful day and also described his smile which, whenever it occurred, lit up a room. His last breath was finite, and he was transformed into the next moment in an instant.

I watched our oldest child twenty-two years later as he struggled for life. In the end, he had one machine pumping his heart, and another feeding oxygen into his lungs. His last real breath occurred sometime before the machines were disconnected, because they were all (there were a couple of others as well) sounding alarms telling the medical staff that they were failing in their task of helping a very injured person stay alive. When the machines were disconnected, one by one, the result was only quietness. Eventually that quietness led to silence when the last machine was released from its task. There was no movement, no final breath, no change. He had gone into surgery reciting all of his personal and medical information to the medical staff, even without being asked. He was alert, intelligent and alive. His surgery was a desparate effort to save his life, and it worked for a short time. He did not, however recover consciousness. He would return to surgery several more times in the next 36 hours, but even though his life was saved, it couldn't be sustained. He died three days after his arrival at the hospital. We can define his last moment of obvious vitality, but we can't define the moment that he was transformed from life to death.

For each of my boys, my breath stopped when they died. And, whenever I consider the moment of each of their deaths, my breath is taken away in awe of that transformation.

In Sympathy

We all hear many words of condolence, and most of them are not very meaningful. It's not the fault of the person speaking, but rather the result of our culture. We live in times in which death often reduced to anti-climactic occurrence within a lifetime. People offer their condolences, and we can appreciate their concern for us. However, offering condolences should not be synonymous with offering sympathy.

When people are truly feeling sympathy for us, they are not merely being kind or socially proper. True sympathy means they are feeling at least some of what we are feeling and are experiencing loss as we are experiencing loss. It may not be so profound, but their sadness goes beyond their concern for our close family.

When I recall the deaths in my own life, without fail I think of our sons, our parents, and my best friend. My best friend's death was a loss that is still with me, and her death has been only slightly overshadowed by the deaths of family members. I remembered this clearly when our son died 25 years ago. I knew that his friends would be confused and hurt, and I wanted to provide them with opportunities to share their own loss and feelings with us. They did return sympathy to us, and it continued for a long time.

They were remarkable for a number of years. They made an effort to get to know me, and I am honored to have become a friend of each of them. During the first year or two, they were near us to reflect and console us often. They were important to me because our son was important to them. I still hold them in high regard. They showed me that they too were wounded by our son's death, and they were truly sympathetic.

When our other son died a year ago, many of his friends were deeply saddened. Because of maturity, they were better able to express their sadness and did so to us. Although some of them had not seen our son for years, they still spoke of their own heartfelt loss and we are touched by the loving words they used in describing their loss of their friend.

Sometimes we are so wounded that we fail to see the hurt of others. In that hurt, however, we can find love and further healing. We are not required to compare our grief, nor are we able. All we can do is open our arms and know the love that was given to friends by our sons. We can then accept that a part of his love is being returned to us in sadness and sincerity.

Broken connections

We have connections to people for different reasons and in different ways. When death takes those people from our lives, we grieve because we miss that person. We also grieve because we miss the relationship.
In the case of our children, we also grieve for the past, and when they are with us, our desire to have those times of them being younger are overwhelmed by whatever their current needs are. For example, I miss when our daughter was a little girl, but I enjoy being with her today and other days, watching her life unfold and her own family mature.
I miss when our boys were little boys, too, but because they died, there is nothing to replace that relationship that is gone. Each one of our children and I were a pair, just as my husband and I were a pair, and being without them is like having unmated socks in the drawer. The important part of them, the colors, the memories, remain but they can't be replaced.
I miss our younger son, his goofy smile that let me know very clearly how he felt about something, his quiet understanding of some of my thoughts and statements. I miss him being sprawled out on the floor, his long legs and arms using up more real estate than necessary. I miss him, but I also miss him being my kid.
I miss our older son as a clever, happy child. I also miss him as an adult. When I hear a single engine plane overhead, I cannot look up, because I know he is not flying that plane. When I open my text messages and email, I know I will not see his name and I miss his quick, often questioning writings. I miss his long conversations that existed mostly because he was out running and his brain needed to be occupied as much as his body.
I imagine his comments to new events in our lives and in the lives of people we know. Sometimes I smile because I know exactly what he would have said to me. Sometimes I'm sad because I know exactly what he would have said to me.
I miss the conversations we will never have, the conversations that revealed how each of them connected to me. I remember one day when they were all in their teens and I said that I would love to get in a raft and just float down a slow-moving river near us.
Our older son asked incredulously, "What would you actually do? Just sit there and look around?" He was thinking I would need more mental stimulation.
Our daughter, always thinking in terms of health said. "You'd get sunburned and bit up by bugs."
Our younger son said quietly, "I'll go with you, Mom."
I miss them, I miss their physical presence. I miss their energy, I miss the fact that they consumed space, I miss the crazy humor and laughter, I miss the tears and frustration. I miss all the connections I had with them. If I myself were a little girl, I might enjoy imaginary conversations, but now, imaginary conversations lead to emptiness when I think of our boys.

The Same Ol', Same Ol' Hole in the Heart

When bereaved parents speak of the hole in their hearts, they are referring to the emptiness that exists, not within physical space, but within emotional space. It is a rending, a tearing, a vacancy that contains pain and sadness.

Perhaps there is a way to expand the metaphor. When the death of a child occurs, the hole is a devastating wound that will never completely heal. As time passes, the sharp edges begin to blend together, and after years, the hole becomes something with a smooth perimeter, perhaps almost symmetrical. Eventually, we begin to see that painful wound as less painful, although just as large, and a permanent property of our own hearts.

I have two such holes in my heart. The second is no smaller than the first, and no less painful, but when it tore a spot away, I knew that it would be there, painful and sad, large and vacant. The two holes in my heart do not share a space, yet they can be perceived close to one another, and tears for one demand tears for the other. I am not sad about the two holes together, but I am as sad as is humanly possible for each one.

I like to think that the holes in my heart have a transparent, protective covering over them, like the glass of a window. The holes will always be there, but from within the depths of each, I can see out. I can see the lives of my two boys and view the memories. I can see the positives they created within their own lives, and I can begin to see hope, happiness, and a vision of sharing with them again in a new future.

I am wondering what the holes in my heart contain for anyone else looking in. May I help them see some memories, and see some of my pride that the holes are not black and indefinable? Can they see the colors of love, joy and thanksgiving that I have about having my sons in at least part of my life?

A Peak at the Future

Across the highway from his grandfather's house was a water tower, about 250 ft. high. The tower was located on top of a rolling hill. It was nearing suppertime, but he grabbed his jacket and zipped his cell phone into the pocket. The sun was moving lower in the west, and he started climbing the tower anyway. He climbed fast, not because he was in a hurry, but because he always moved quickly, trying to get any and every activity finished.

When he reached the top of the tower, he was happy he had his jacket because the wind was chilly as he climbed above the ground. He gave a sigh and began looking around. Near the horizon from the west to the south, he caught glimpses of the Elkhorn River as it angled southwest to join the Platte. To the northwest, he could not see very far over the hilly Northeast Nebraska countryside, so he was unable to see the town where he was born and went to school, the town where his younger brother had died. He could not see where he had spent his past.

He turned clockwise and could imagine Sioux City straight north behind the hills once called "Indian Country." He could follow the bluffs of the Missouri River from the horizon in the north to Omaha in the south. He knew the bluffs marked the border of Nebraska and Iowa.

As he looked south, he estimated Omaha to be about 30 miles away, if one could travel in a straight line. The town of Fremont, where he was practice teaching, was along the Platte River Plain to the right of Omaha. He again looked toward Omaha and saw the three towers of red lights, now beaming in the twilight, that stood side by side in the northwest part of the city.

Unknowingly, he was looking at his future. The edge of Omaha, in line with the three lit towers, is where his sister would live after she married and had two children. The town of Fremont is where he and his future wife (though he did not yet know her) would start their family. He did see where the hills of Omaha dropped to a valley to the west of Omaha. The western-most bluff was several miles from the Missouri, and hovered above both the Elkhorn and the Platte. It held the home to which he, his wife and two sons would move and love. It was a view he would see many times after he learned to fly and become a flight instructor. He could not see what would happen at the foot of the bluff near the Elkhorn River.

Looking down, he saw his grandfather had arrived home with supper. He used his cell phone and told "Grandpa" to go outside and look up at him. Then it was time to climb down the water tower.

What he would not have seen at the top of the tower when he was looking at Omaha, at the light towers, at Fremont, and at the Western end of the bluffs, was a hillside just north of his bluff area home. It was a cemetery that was tucked into the side of the bluffs. It was the place where he would be remembered and memorialized in just a little more than twenty years.

Reminders

It's so rewarding to have so many reminders of our children that we outlived. This morning, while on FaceBook, I saw a side-panel ad that included a Camero. Although no one in our family had a Camero, both of our boys admired them. On more than one occasion, when I was driving somewhere with the older son in the car, he would say, "Mom! Turn right." Not knowing the cause for the urgency, I would turn right, and then our son would say, "Now slow way down." And as I slowed, he would slowly look over a Camero parked along the street, expressing his admiration.
On FaceBook, someone posted (of course) a picture of a cat. It was a Burmese, and we once had a cat with that coloring. Every night our younger son would start going upstairs, and then would call the cat, "Come On, Misty," and the cat would run to follow him up the stairs and into his room for the night. The cat lived for several years after our son died, but never again went upstairs.
Somebody posted about a bike trip on FaceBook, and I remembered all three of our kids participating in the annual bike ride across the state for several years. Our oldest would get up, go as fast as he could, and would be among the first riders to arrive in the specified town. Our daughter would ride with a new-found friend and arrive somewhere in the middle of the day. Our younger son would be one of the last to arrive at the destination, worrying his older brother.
People who knew one or the other of the boys sometimes ask me if they were alike. In some ways they were very much alike in that they had very funny senses of humor, they were very caring about other people, and they were both very creative. The older was talkative and was always on the move with one activity or another. The younger one could be very quiet, seemed to enjoy solitude, and was able to sit quietly just watching and observing. They both were the source of many memories and stories.