Author Archives: growthlines

Our Universal Loss

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The first time I saw a portion of the AIDS Memorial Quilt was in 1991, in Wichita, KS.  It was a small part of the entire quilt, and it filled the floor of the convention center.  I had read about the quilt from the beginning.  I had seen photographs of the display on the mall in Washington, D.C.  None of that prepared me for the flood of emotion I felt as I walked among the quilt blocks on display that day.  Looking at the first block, I knew I had stepped into sacred space, as though I had been allowed to witness thousands of private moments of loss and remembrance.

Each quilt block held the remnants of a life.  Stories told piece by piece through pictures, pieces of clothing, belongings that identified each person as unique, known, loved.  The fabric blocks were tangible evidence that this person participated with family and friends in this life, and was now gone, but never forgotten.

Harold Marcuse, is a professor of German history at University of California, Santa Barbara.  His research on the view of different groups looking back on the Nazi period since 1945 is presented in his book, Legacies of Dachau, 1933-2001.  One of the stories is of German pastor, Martin Niemöller’s visit to Dachau concentration camp in November 1945.  Noemöller had been imprisoned at Dachau from 1941 to April 1945.  Marcuse notes that Niemöller’s November diary entry and subsequent speeches suggest returning to Dachau prompted thoughts that by the early 1950s had become this familiar poem.

First they came for the
socialists, and I did not speak out
because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the
trade unionists,
And I did not speak out
because I was not
a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out,
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left
to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller 

Today, December 1, 2011, is World AIDS Day.  A day that will be just another day for many.  A day when many will not speak out, because they believe AIDS is someone else’s loss.  But today is a day that belongs to us all.  It is symbolic of our universal loss, whether we recognize or acknowledge it.  We believed AIDS belonged only to the indiscriminate, the addict, the transfused, the gay, and have said nothing.  Can we hear that 1000 babies are born with HIV every day and say this loss is not ours.

I recently watched Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story with a group of middle school students.  Liz lost both of her parents to AIDS over a ten year span.  In the discussion following the film, a student ask “What is AIDS?”  In that moment I was reminded that the advances in treating AIDS leaves us at risk of forgetting that the disease exists, and there is still no cure.  That people’s lives are still being forever changed, and lost.  Take time today to acknowledge that AIDS is a loss that belongs to us all, and decide how you will speak out.

 

Liebster Blog Award

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A few days before Thanksgiving I received a surprise gift from slowmoto.me.  The GrowthLines blog was nominated for a Liebster Blog Award.  Thank you for adding an unexpected moment of joy to this season of giving thanks.  Thank you for sharing your magnificent slowmoto.me visual and written images with the blogging community.
This Award is given to bloggers who have less than 200 followers, all in the spirit of fostering new connections. 

Liebster is German & means ‘dearest’ or ‘beloved’ but it can also mean ‘favorite’ & the idea of the Liebster award is to bring attention to blogs with less than 200 followers and I am following Aurora’s lead as I write a post about it and pass the award on to 5 or more bloggers.


The Rules are:

  1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them.
  2. Reveal your top 5 picks for the award and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
  3. Post the award on your blog.
  4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the blogosphere – other bloggers.
  5. And, best of all – have fun and spread the karma.

 

I would like to nominate the following blogs:

 

http://ghockeymom.wordpress.com/
http://findinglifeinadeath.wordpress.com/
http://onewomansperspective02.wordpress.com/
http://fortheloveofnike.wordpress.com/
http://kirbyfullyloaded.wordpress.com/

After a harsh winter…

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No holiday should be a time of sorrow, a place acquainted with grief.  Certainly not Thanksgiving.  There is nothing in the name that suggests loss.  It’s a time to gather with family and friends.  A time to “give thanks”.  Who wants to give thanks for loss or difficulty?  Nevertheless, we are faced with the reality that Thanksgiving is experienced in a context that includes hardship and tragedy.

I’ve thought a lot about the marriage of gratitude and grief during this Thanksgiving holiday.  Maybe it was writing the series of posts about loss.  Maybe it was spending time with three generations of family. Maybe it was attending the funeral of a friend  two days after Thanksgiving.

I decided to revisit how this holiday came to be, so I googled “Thanksgiving”.  A sentence caught my eye.

“The first American Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621, to commemorate the harvest reaped by the Plymouth Colony after a harsh winter.”

On that first holiday they gave thanks for the bounty of the harvest, “after a harsh winter.”   Their celebration was based on having survived a season of hard work, tragedy, and loss.  They gave thanks for the gift of plenty.  They gave thanks for the discovery of their own strength and resilience through difficulty.

President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanks in October, 1863.  A day of giving thanks, in the midst of the Civil War.  What was there to be thankful for in a time of such internal turmoil?  How could we be grateful in the face of so much destruction and death?  Perhaps Lincoln hoped that a day of Thanksgiving might remind us of our connection rather than all that divided us.  That our strength and resilience might unite us once more.

It seems that Thanksgiving has always been about gratitude in the midst of loss.  Gratitude for the gift of time, of health, of relationship.  John Claypool came to understand gratitude “after a harsh winter,” when his ten year old daughter died of leukemia. In the midst of his grief he realized that he had never been promised a span of time with her.  That each year had been a gift.  He began to move from anger that he had been robbed of a lifetime with her, to thanksgiving for every unpromised moment shared over those ten years.  Claypool discovered the gift of his own resilience.  Grounded in the strength that comes from adversity, he made his way beyond his own winter of grief to a place of healing gratitude.

What if our clearest moments of resilience and strength are mined from the landscape of our disappointments and tragedies?  What if the key to discovering these gifts is our willingness to fall into the abyss of our grief.  Psychology Today, Psych Basics, notes that,

“Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make someone resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback. Even after a misfortune, blessed with such an outlook, resilient people are able to change course and soldier on.”

What does it mean to “soldier on”?  I don’t think it means being an untouchable stoic who never falters, never sheds a tear.  I think to “soldier on” may mean that we continue to rise in all our faltering, tearful, uncertain, grieving humanness. Continuing to rise again, and again, until we find a new balance.

J.R. Martinez began to “change course and soldier on” a long time before he won Dancing With the Stars.  After his win, he received a note from US Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta that read:

“Your strength and spirit captivated the nation, and your victory sends a strong message about the strength and resilience of our wounded warriors.”

In reality, we are all wounded warriors, struggling to soldier on after our own harsh winter, to a place of thanksgiving.  I hope as you sat with loved ones at your Thanksgiving table, you received the gift of strength and resilience that comes after surviving a harsh winter with grief and gratitude.

Papa’s Stocking

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I attended a Hospice Memorial service just before Thanksgiving several years ago.  The room was filled with families and friends who had experienced the death of someone they loved during the past year.  It was a time of remembering.  And a time to focus on the journey of living through grief.

Loss is one of the few experiences besides our birth that is universal.  We would be hard pressed to find a single person in a crowd, who has not had some personal contact with grief.  How is it then that grief can feel so solitary?  Perhaps that mixture of solitary and universal is why talking about our grief brings both pain and relief.  But talking about loss and the grief that follows is important if we are to weave both joy and sorrow into our own rich fabric.

I don’t remember the name of the speaker at that Hospice service, but I remember the personal story he told about finding joy in the midst of grief.   After his wife’s mother passed away, his father in law came to live in their home.  He quickly became an integral part of their daily lives.  And then last year, in the fall, Papa had died.  The man, his wife, and two daughters were left with the empty spaces that Papa had once filled.  As Christmas drew near, the depth of their loss was magnified.  Christmas traditions that had been a source of joy, were now a reminder of Papa’s absence.  This was especially true when it was time to hang their Christmas stockings.  There was Papa’s stocking, empty.  Just like his chair at the table.  Just like the hole left in their hearts.

They began to talk about the pain of Papa’s absence, and the dilemma of how to have Christmas without him.  A new tradition, a ritual of healing, was born out of that conversation.  Papa’s stocking would be hung in its place on the mantel, with slips of paper near by.  In the days leading up to Christmas morning, family members wrote their thoughts, memories, feelings about Papa and dropped them in his stocking.  On Christmas morning after presents had been opened, and their own stockings emptied, they read the notes from Papa’s stocking. There were tears, and laughter, and connection with each other and with Papa on that Christmas morning.

I don’t know if they hung Papa’s stocking beyond that first year he was gone.  But I do know their Christmas story is a wonderful example of partnering with grief to create a moment of celebration that will last a lifetime. They had discovered that although Papa was gone, he was not lost to them.  Sometimes healing comes not from avoiding the painful moment, but from stepping into it to create a new meaning.

I wish it was not yours to do…

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A child’s death at any age leaves a gaping hole.  Before birth or after.  When your child is young or old. Their death separates you from all that is living.  A painful gap between the world that was taken from you, and the flat, grey world in which you find yourself. We see your pain, but we don’t know what to do with it.  It is palpable.  We want to acknowledge your loss, and maybe even apologize for the relief we feel every time we look at our own child, knowing that our heart is still whole, while yours is not.  So we walk with you, not because we know exactly how you feel, but because we don’t want you to be alone.  We find a way, however awkward, to say we’re sorry that this is now your job…

How You Rise Each Day

I wish
It were not
Yours to do.

But it is
Your pain,
And you have wrestled it
To the ground,
Rising again
And again
Until you found its heart
And forced it to join you
In celebration of him,
Your son,
John Michael.

It is a mystery to me
How you rise each day
To be reminded
That you are,
And he is not.

Perhaps because you were
His beginning,
And witness to his brief present,
Now you must become his future.
Walking where he cannot,
Breathing life into each
Precious dream
Until his footprints surround us
With all he would have been
Had he not gone so soon.

I wish
It was not
Yours to do.

But it is your grief,
And you have donned its
Black cloak of mourning
With courage,
Determined to dance again
In celebration of him,
Your son,
John Michael.

 

 

 

And dance you will.
Slowly,
At times halting,
Then with confidence
And joy,
Filling the world again
With color,
Vibrant,
Youthful
As you dance not your dance,
But his,
Your son,
John Michael.

© Paulann Condray Canty, 2011 

 

“Death comes to our dances, and if we dance at all, it must be in her forbidding presence.  But the wondrous conclusion is that we who must die, must dance, and that both are our destiny, and neither dying nor dancing is missing from the whole of life.”                                                                                                                 —-Calvin Miller

Thank you, Skip and Marsha, for living your journey of turning mourning into dancing before us.  You give us hope that having come through the dark night, we too can return to the dance.  Thank you for not hiding your pain from us.  Thank you for letting us join you in celebrating your son’s life.

In Memory of

John Michael Gore
July 27, 1984 – October 11, 2009

“a person of sorrows, acquainted with grief”

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"a person of sorrows, acquainted with grief."My grandfather died at sixty nine, after a life filled with farming, ranching, and carpentering on the side.  My great grandmother, Nora, was still living and ninety years old.  She had lost her oldest grandson, and less than two years later, her husband.  She had been a widow for thirty five years.  I was devastated by my grandfather’s death.  But, I guess I thought my great grandmother had seen so much loss and grief in her ninety years, that it was different for her.  Maybe she had gained immunity from loss.  And then she was in front of his casket, weeping and repeating, “My baby, oh, my baby”, a mantra that captured all she had lost.  In that moment I knew there was no age limit, no statute of limitations, no point at which losing your child felt less, rather than more.

John Claypool wrote Tracks of a Fellow Struggler, following the death of his ten year old daughter from acute leukemia.  He reminds us that we are all “a person of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”, for grief is ours whenever we lose something we value.  Claypool identifies loss and grief , not as isolated events, but as an integral part of our life journey.

“Learning to handle these in a healthy way–learning how to lose, so to speak–is one of life’s most important challenges.  It can hardly be begun too soon.”

He acknowledges our attempts to protect our children from grief, while pointing out that…

“as soon as a child is old enough to love something that can be lost, that one is a candidate to become ‘a person of sorrows, acquainted with grief.’  Very few get very far without experiencing loss in some way.

“The truth is–for every one of us–that there is no way to avoid the trauma of loss if we love even a little.  This is what makes the task of learning to handle grief so important.”

I think my great grandmother had spent her life “learning to lose”.  She was well acquainted with grief.  I watched her handle loss by returning to life, from my earliest memories until her own death at ninety-two.  I also watched her step into the painful presence of loss when my grandfather died.

I have not had to find life after the death of a child.  Having stood by as friends entered this dark night of the soul, I have asked myself the question a colleague of John Claypool asked.  “Those of us who have not been there wonder what it is like out there in the Darkness.  Can you tell us?”  Claypool’s response was both profound and ambiguous.  “Yes and no.”  Perhaps the path to learning to handle grief begins with the courage to start the conversation.

“The first thing I want you to know…”

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There may be no loss so out of sync as the death of a child.  And as if that monumental death alone is not enough, the death of our child brings a partnership with loss that spans our lifetime.  I heard an interview a few years ago with a mother whose young son had been killed in a bicycle accident.  She described the breadth of this loss by saying,

“When I woke up the next morning, I was surprised that I was still here.  I couldn’t imagine how I could have survived his death.  A year later, I was still surprised.  It’s been 10 years, and I still don’t understand how I’m here.”

She voices for every parent, the perpetual dance of grieving for your child while continuing to live your own life, and theirs.

My first experience with the permanent impact of a child’s death on a parent came when I was twelve years old, sitting on the bed in my Grandma’s bedroom.  She was cleaning house as I followed her from room to room.  There was a group of photographs on the wall by the door.  They were the last pictures of my Dad’s older brother, Junior, taken a week before he died at age 13.

He came home from school, saying he didn’t feel good, and in less than two days was dead from spinal meningitis.  His funeral was held at home under quarantine, with only family present.  He was something of a mystery to me, made more so by the black and white photographs that had been enlarged and hand painted in pale, transparent colors.

Grandma cleaned and I sat on her bed, staring at those pictures.  Then I said, “Grandma, tell me about Junior.”.  She opened her mouth to speak, and instead began to cry.  I have no memory of what happened after that, of what she did or didn’t say, of how I got out of the room.  I just felt the power of my question to make her cry, and the depth of her wound.  Later, after I was grown, I wondered if her tears were only tears of pain, or also tears of thanks, of relief, that someone remembered and asked about her son.  I knew my Grandma as a hard-working, caring woman, with a delightful, childlike laugh.  Somehow she had continued living, while carrying this loss just below the surface.

Doug Manning, author and speaker on grief, tells about a friend leading a group at a local funeral home, for parents who had lost a child.  An 80 year old woman was the first person to arrive.  The group facilitator asked if he could help her, assuming that she was at the funeral home for visitation.  She told him she was there for the group, but was uncertain about whether she should stay.  He asked her if she had lost a child.  She told him her story.  That her son had been stillborn at a time when people didn’t talk about grief.  That her husband and family refused to talk about the loss.  For nearly 60 years she had been grieving in silence.  She went on to say, “My husband is dead now, and it’s just me.”  The man asked what she would like for him to know about her son.  Her response…”The first thing I want you to know is his name is Tommy.”  She had never spoken his name aloud.

Maybe my Grandma was waiting, just like the 80 year old woman was waiting, for someone to ask about her child.  To join her in giving her child’s life meaning and significance, sometimes through the simple gift of speaking a name.

Too Soon

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Loss is an experience we all have in common.  It doesn’t remain common.  Loss becomes unique and personal, changed by the context of our individual lives, our experiences, our history, our personalities. Many of our losses are visible, public experiences. Personal loss lived out with family, friends, community.

Miscarriage is a death that, for many, is lived out in solitary, an “unrecorded” loss.  The death of a child before birth stops us in our anticipation and preparation for welcoming and celebrating a new being’s entry into our lives.  Even the term “miscarriage” sets this loss apart, like other words we attach “mis” to. That somehow we failed, missed the mark, or didn’t understand what we were supposed to do.  So this is the death that is sometimes unaddressed, and even ignored, leaving us to make our own meaning and grieve our loss silently and alone.

I checked my email before settling in to write about this particular loss, and discovered a reference to “The Dash”, a poem by Linda Ellis.  She reminds us that it is not the dates at the beginning and end of our lives that define us, but the life lived in between.  The life lived in the dash.  It hit me that the loss of miscarriage is that there is no dash.  The life was being lived in a mother’s womb, and death may have come before she even felt the moving, growing of her unborn child.

How do we share the grief of miscarriage?  Sometimes by simply acknowledging that it is a death.  The death of all you hoped and expected to experience as the parent of this child.  The death of the chance for this child to establish his or her own meaning and identity in this world, their own dash.

Too Soon

Tiny seed of love
That I have longed to hold,
While smallest bud,
Has ceased to grow.
Held gently in these hands
Too soon,
Blossom now within my heart
And comfort
As I let you go.

  © Paulann Condray Canty 

(The poem was written in 1988 to acknowledge the grief of a friend who lost her unborn child early in pregnancy)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,…

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As we rapidly approach the holiday period that includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, I feel compelled to write about loss.  It seems odd doesn’t it, that holidays and celebration would leave me thinking about the sadness that can surround us during our “happy” times.  What a contradiction that the very happiness we feel reminds us of the changes we have endured, and the people who will not be there to join us in the next joyous occasion.

Charles Dickens opened A Tale of Two Cities with:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,… it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, …

Dickens reminds us that our joy and sorrow coexist.  So, because the period from November 1 to January 2 is a strange mix of “the best of times” and “the worst of times”,  I will think out loud about what it means to step into a single moment of mourning loss and celebrating life.  Maybe that’s what Walter Wangerin intended when he titled his book, Mourning Into Dancing.  Maybe he wanted to help us find words to describe our experience with that thing so present, and so unspoken, death.

Death comes, and we grieve.  If Dickens had written about the contradiction of grief, he might have said,

Grief is an odd thing.  Reminder of our loss and the last connection between us and the person we loved.  Our numbing and our unspeakable pain.  Our tears and our rage. Grief feels like the enemy, while absorbing our time like a best friend.  At once universal and unique.

I believe there is power in our stories.  I believe there is healing and growth in our stories of loss.  I believe there is beauty, and yes, even celebration in sharing our stories.

Connection

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Saturday was an incredibly full day.  It began with breakfast at one of our “regular” places.  I ordered what I “usually” order.  Later that morning I sat in a church sanctuary, celebrating the life of a longtime friend who finished her race in this life and crossed over into eternity. There was wonderful “catch up” conversation with a friend over a lunch that extended into the afternoon.  Then the spontaneous decision to drive to another town to catch the play “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”, and finally back home to crash on the couch with a dog who thinks I hung the moon.

As I snuggled with the dog I replayed the day.  Not just the time spent, but the emotions felt.  I thought about the gift of connection. In the course of my day I had experienced…

  • the connection and comfort of routine.  Those things we do over and over, day in and day out, that ground us in the familiar.
  • the connection of remembering and celebrating one who enriched and changed us in this life on her way to the next.
  • the connection of friendship, of shared space and conversation that warms like an old flannel shirt.
  • the connection of laughter as I joined a community of strangers to watch a play.
  • the connection of a pet who loves me without judgement or hesitation.

Resting there on the couch I felt profoundly thankful for the connections of the day.  I was glad to be reminded of the connections across the years and the ways they had challenged and sustained me.  I hoped to step into the week ahead more mindful of the space we share and our impact, for good or bad, on each other.

And then Tuesday came.  April 19.  The sixteenth anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.  Tuesday came and reminded me of the powerful connection of shared experience. If you were living in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995, you probably remember where you were and what you were doing at 9:02 when the Murrah Federal Building was bombed.  Shared experience invites us to rise above what separates us.  On April 19, 1995, an act intended to destroy led us to common ground and gave us a reason to connect.  We connected then to rescue, to grieve, to grow, and eventually to celebrate our resilience.

Celebrate connection!   The small and the large of it.  The quiet and the loud of it.  The joy, and even the pain of it.  Most of all celebrate the timing of it and choose to connect now, with family and friends, with occasional acquaintances, with total strangers.  Connect with those like you, and not, with God’s creatures, and with yourself.  Look for the “tie that binds” and just connect.