A Gift from Grandma

I think about my grandma all the time.  She died four years ago on March 17th.  Some days it feels like we have been without her forever.  Other days it was just yesterday that I sat in a room talking to her.
I have experienced grief where the pain of memories seers the muscles of your heart and strums the nerves in your mind.
Remembering my grandma has never felt this way.  She spent my life preparing me for the day that I would not be with her.  It was not done despairingly or dark and gloomy.  She was just very honest about her struggle with chronic illness and the prognosis for her life.  She talked to me honestly, shared stories of her challenges, her accomplishments and her failures.  Unlike any other adult in my life, she allowed me to see her vulnerable and she gave me permission to be fallible while encouraging me to be better in light of mistakes or missteps.  Possibly I am painting a picture of a soft spoken, gentle woman.  That brings a huge smile to my face.  My grandma was outspoken, opinionated, hard headed and relentless. I was witness to many instances where the recipient of her sharp tongue was fighting a losing battle.  As difficult as my grandma could be she was always in my corner, supporting my spirit and who I was or who I could be.
My grandma's death was sudden and anticipated.  Someone who has watched a loved one struggle with a lifelong chronic illness will understand this sentiment.  I think when my family is honest, we knew that her time with us was increasingly limited, but one day she was okay and within a week she was gone.  I remember feeling like there was a tear in the fabric of my existence the day that she died.  I was not sure how I would navigate life without my cheerleader.
I would like to reiterate my love for my grandma.  Her presence in my life was a blessing and her death filled me with sadness.  I have learned that as we learn to cope and heal following the death of loved ones sometimes we begin to see the gifts that they have left for us.  The reminders that while life is different without them their influence continues to the end of our days.  My grandma's death left me two very special gifts and I am so grateful.
The first gift is the relationship that I developed with my grandpa.  My grandma was such a force in our family.  As in many relationships, I think that it was easy for my grandpa to be eclipsed by the enormity of my grandma's personality.  My grandpa is a quiet, thoughtful, humorous soul but my grandma was regularly the one that relayed information from our family to theirs and vice versa.  Following her death, we had to refashion the connectedness that we chose to have with one another.  I began to see my grandpa differently. I heard his voice, I could visualize his world and learned about who he was as an individual.
I have always loved my grandpa, but now we are part of a relationship.  It is nice to communicate with him and I have learned so much about who he is.  It is a gift and I cherish him more every day.
The second gift is a little more complex.
Following my grandma's death, I felt an emptiness.  I missed the love and support that she gave me and I believed that was an adjustment that I would have to make.
Audrey entered my life by bringing happiness to my grandpa's life.  Audrey has a gentle, considerate nature.  She has embraced our family with empathy and compassion, recognizing that we would need time to reconcile our loss.  It did not take long to see that she is thoughtful and witty (like my grandfather).  Her charisma and energy is infectious and welcoming.  Audrey did not join our family trying to fill a hole.  She has shown our family so much respect and yet as I recognize my grandma will never be replaceable I also acknowledge that there is a place for Audrey in our lives and in our family.  People become family on much less merit than the love, patience and respect Audrey has shown for my family.  I do not believe anyone can have too much love.  I feel blessed and like my grandma has given me one more gift in Audrey. 
My grandma defined her role in my life by being my cheerleader, by loving and respecting me.  In life I felt very loved by her and in death she ensured that I would continue to feel loved.  How lucky am I?  

A Refuge in Music

I am stealing the idea for this blog from my wonderful friend across the pond, Nicola who has the ability to inspire through her writing.  This time she has made me think about how music or more precisely songs, have chronicled the grief in my life.   At the time of significant loss, I would lose myself in my thoughts, hide away in my room, house or car and just listen to songs that reminded me of the hurt or the hope.  
For those of you who hang on to the notion of music and culture (you know who you are)I will profess that my choice of songs may have been pop sensations or one hit wonders.  At the time of their importance, the songs were not about the charts or the artistic form but rather for the words or the melody  and how it suited my life at that point in time.
I thought I would include a brief summary before the song, an insight into the loss and how the song came to be the theme for that time in my life.


I remember visiting my girlfriend's dad in the hospital after he was diagnosed with cancer.  I can still recall how a significant man in stature and composure could look so weak and vulnerable, it broke my heart.  His death changed my reality, I was no longer immortal.  The day that I drove to his funeral, this song was playing on the radio.  When the phone rang at my home later that day to tell me that my other friend's sister had just died, it seemed that much more fitting.

Everybody Hurts - REM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudOFG5X6uA

This song has become epic for funerals and as a theme to prevent suicide, but the day I heard it was the first day it was released on the radio.

Ten months later, a handful of friends waited with baited breath to hear news that our friend, Sheri, would overcome her current struggle with Cystic Fibrosis.  We prayed that this time like others, was just a blip in her life story and she would continue to beat the odds of a life-limiting illness.  On a Friday evening I returned home from work to my parent's sympathetic looks.  I remember the instant flash of hatred that they would or could tell me such a lie, that my beloved friend could not possibly have died, this was not the way our paths would end.  All I could do was run from my house and get in the car and drive.  I know that there seems to be a theme, but on that drive this song came on the radio, not only one of my favourite performers but words that held meaning to my relationship with my friend.

I'll Remember - Madonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0628NtGJAWQ

I never thought that I would know a more profound death than that of my friend Sheri.  Hers was a kinship that I will never be able to properly put into words.

A celebrated pregnancy, an anticipated child, a belief in the exception to the rule; these were all the ways I would describe my naivete prior to Flynn's birth.  Even five weeks of bed rest, doctor's appointments and ultrasounds did not deter my hope for the end result of a healthy child. I never stopped talking to him, establishing a bond between mother and child, rocking my body to soothe him to sleep or answering his kicks with the rub of my belly.  His birth and death would devastate my normal, turn my world upside down.  Every song hurt, every melody, every poetic verse cut through me, it took months to find solace.  This song gave expression to how I thought and felt about Flynn, how I was coping, how much I missed him and needed to redefine our relationship so I could continue.

Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdYWuo9OFAw

There have been times in my life that I have felt like the singer, singing to Flynn and then other times when I felt like he was the singer and the song was his message to me.

When Landy and I separated, it was a devastating and confusing time in both of our lives.  Nothing that we said to each other provided comfort.  In fact, words meant to soothe were construed as words meant to wound.  Many conversations broke down and escalated our situation further into anger and sadness.  It was at that time that I could not find words to convey the hurt that this song came on the radio.  Not only did it illustrate how I saw the two of us NOT communicating, it said the things that I could not.

How to Save a Life - The Fray
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VKja7XmFcM

My Grandma had an exhaustive influence on my life and in how I came to be me. Her defiance of the odds, her stamina in the face of chronic illness and her liberated view of my world gave me the confidence that I could be anyone and anything.  What a powerful message to give to a young girl in today's society.  Her imperfections, her biases, her mistakes allowed me to be flawed and to be human.  The day that she died (as we headed home from vacation), I realized that my world would be changed once more.  I heard this song on our long drive home from Florida and I knew that there was nothing more to fix, but it was something that as a child I had wanted more than life, to be able to fix her.
Fix You - Coldplay
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skUJ-B6oVDQ

I think that in light of the length of this blog, I will simply leave you with a quote by one of my favourite poets:
"Music was my refuge.  I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."  ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name

You Can Always Learn

I decided to write an academic paper on the death of a child, more specifically on the death of a baby.  I wanted to have a better understanding of how people in a supportive role may view the experience of parental grief based on the academic theory that is out there.  While some journal articles and texts were excellent in accurately describing what I knew to be my experience, other papers described grief in terms of coming to an end or unhealthy if not drawn to a conclusive close.  While interpretation is subjective and even the topic of grief is an individual experience, it was concerning to think that a support system might put expectations on grievers that were neither empathetic or helpful in their approach.
Another interesting theme in the literature was the differential between death of a baby and death of a child. It was because of the distinction that I had to pick a focus for my paper that I originally intended to be generally on the death of a child.  I was not surprised by the separation of death experiences, I have witnessed that need for distinction in my work offering support to bereaved parents and it both fascinates and concerns me that a differential is made.  The importance of the age of the child at the time of death plays into the societal ambivalence surrounding perinatal death, stillbirth, and infant death as well as impacting bereaved parents of older adult children.  The more specific the death "credentials" to the legitimacy of the experience the more difficult it may be for parents to find support through common losses.  For instance a support worker may feel challenged to find peer support for a bereaved parent who wants to meet with a parent who has experienced the death of a 16 year old to a car accident where there was no illegal activity involved in the death.  This may seem like a specific and unlikely scenario but I have seen the affects of differentiating and how it can lead to more and more distinctions, which ultimately have the ability to isolate and alienate the parents who seek the inclusiveness and the parents who are excluded.
I have even read in a text for clinicians on how to support a bereaved parent, that parents who have experienced the death of a baby "have a briefer period of grief than parents of an older child."  I would counter this literature and say that parents of a child of any age have their own unique experience with grief.  The death of a child, no matter the circumstances of the death or the age of the deceased presents parents with the unimaginable task of continuing their life with the knowledge that your child will never meet the milestones, have the experiences, create the memories that the parent themselves have experienced.  To challenge how long it takes for a parent to learn to cope with grief based on the amount of time that the parent interacted with the child (how long the child was alive) assumes that a parent's love and value for the child begins at a time distinguished by society. What about the parent who dreamed of having children since they were young, in the delivery room with a list of names they started in their early teens, shocked by the stillbirth of their baby?  Is the death of that new life less valid because the parents did not hear them cry?
Here is what I know.  I loved my son from the time I was a young girl playing with dolls, imagining my future family.  I sat with doctors and nurses as they explained that he would have a fraction of a chance at a life that was sustainable and that we, as his parents, would need to make decisions to use extraordinary measures to keep him alive or to discontinue care so that he would die.  I held his tiny, warm body, just seconds after going through the physical experience of his delivery, seeing how perfect his fingers and toes were, how his face looked just like that of his older brother and watched as nurses put a stethoscope to his chest to confirm a heartbeat.  I heard the paediatrician tell me that there was nothing more that they could do for him and that we could hold him as he painlessly succumbed to his tiny body, lungs that could not breathe, his brain deprived of oxygen would stop sending messages for his heart to continue.
I sat with a funeral director and discussed burial versus cremation, picked out flowers, wrote a service, created a headstone and picked out a spot in a cemetery.  I watched the tiny white casket carried from the funeral car by my husband, sit above the small rectangular hole dug into the ground while we described his short life to friends and family who never had the opportunity to see or hold him.
I know what day I found out I was pregnant, the day that I found out things would forever change, the day he was due and the day he was born.  I knew the year that he should have started kindergarten and I will know when it is the year that he should be graduating.
I am not stuck in my grief, but his little life rides side care to mine.  I am constantly reminded where he is not.  He was my child, dreamt years before his conception, grown in my womb, born into my arms and taken from my heart.  His age only matters to the theorists and studies that believe that impact is measurable through technology and science, to me a future without him start at his birth and will last my lifetime.

Missing Flynn

The thing about grief is, even if you think that you are coping and your grief is a part of the past, so much so that at times it seems unrelatable to the present, it can and will still knock you on your ass.
Not to say that these waves of grief are not predictable.  As you become more familiar with your vulnerabilities and triggers, you become more aware of when a grief burst will hit. But even if you can see it coming, it is unavoidable, you are going to face it and it is going to hurt.
When I am tired, not eating and sleeping properly, maybe starting on a cold and creating more stress in an already stressful situation, that is when I am most susceptible to feeling a grief burst.
Right now, full time at school, new situation, new roles and responsibilities, I am definitely run down and under more pressure than usual.  Add to that the fact that Kinley is turning three, there does not appear to be room for another child in our family right now, and lets face it I am not getting any younger and  you have created my perfect storm of emotion.
I feel similar to how I did right after Flynn died too, noticing every pregnant woman at school, in the grocery store, on Facebook!  I obsessively look through pictures of newborns and dream about what it would be like to hold a baby again.
Then I realize how different I would feel if Flynn were alive.  How I might feel more complete if he were here right now.  Eight years old, filling up our all boy clan, contributing to my parenting woes, that although I complain about them I secretly love being needed and loved by my boys.  What if he were here, how would I be different, how would our family be and feel?
All this thinking about what could be has made me sad, realizing how much I missed getting the opportunity to know our second son.  To see what sports he would be into, to meet his friends, to help him with his school work, to break up fights with his brothers and to hear about his wishes and dreams.
Today I cannot think about the fact that if he were here my path would look different too. I most likely would not be in school pursuing a degree in social work and specializing in the study of grief and bereavement.  Today I just need to miss him and I do.

Anticipation

What can I say about anticipation?
Well first of all it depends what you are anticipating.  Anticipation of a dreaded event or anxiously awaiting a special day may have similar physical and psychological symptoms. There may be the nervousness, the sleepless nights, appetite issues (both eating and not), and the unfocused energy, but ultimately dreaded anticipation and eager anticipation could not be more different.  Afterall the outcome is either rewarding or difficult.

This post is about the dreaded anticipation.  Knowing that a date is looming, one that you hoped would never come or one that marks an anniversary of a date you wish you could forget.  This type of anticipation produces its own neurosis and this summer has been filled with that type of anticipation for me.

I recently decided to leave my job (which I thoroughly enjoy) to complete my degree and pursue my Masters.  Something that my readers may think would or should be exciting, new and an anxiously awaited event.  Well reader, to my surprise it was anything but.  Announcing my decision to leave work and pursue my education was the first dreaded anticipation.  That one admittedly was short, the decision and the announcement were only a week apart but once the announcement was made fear set it, almost immediately.  Each day at work became a realization that I was even closer to my last day and that I would need to embrace a new endeavour, I was leaving something I understood and did well, this was a completely new lifestyle and my family was counting on me to be a success.
IN fact my family was putting their complete faith in me to succeed. This was not their idea, for me to return to school, I had to ask them to buy into this pursuit too.

Anticipation of my last day of work led to sleepless nights, nausea, heart burn, headaches, every physical symptom that can leave you feeling battered, bruised and doubting the initial decision to leave.  Every day I wanted to throw in the towel, continue on the road I had been travelling.  Stick with the job I was comfortable at, continue the role that I had started, knowing full well that this job would limit my future opportunities in my field.  Anticipation was overshadowing rational thinking.  Somedays it even took over for the rational side of my brain all together, leaving me bartering with myself to try to juggle a full time job, full time school, motherhood and a marriage, really who was I kidding?
As the last week of work approached I started with panic attacks, forseeing an unrealistic amount of expectations and workload looming on my desk.  Whether real or fictional I began to believe that the anxiety I was feeling could be alleviated if I just decided to stay.  I began to question my ability as a student, as a future social worker, even convincing myself that any education or ability that I had already obtained was all for not, because I could not do it.
And then the last day came.
I showed up to work at regular time, did my regular work, had regular conversations, maybe a couple of conversations were out of the ordinary because they were discussing my departure.  Ultimately though, my day was regular.  Nothing horrible happened.  I went home that night and everything about that day felt the same as the day before.
Actually that is not completely true, the day did have a couple of abnormal moments.  I felt some residual grief.  I think I said Flynn's name in reference to one of my other boys about four times. Maybe that was because this job had so much of Flynn's life invested in it and maybe I felt like a part of me was being left behind.  I did find it hard to concentrate on one thing for too long, my mind needed a break.  I could also feel my emotions closer to the surface ready to spring forth if given an opportunity.  It was all manageable though, I recognized that I needed to be patient with myself and allow for whatever my spirit needed that day and I got through it.

So the last dreaded anticipation surrounded the first day of school.  The big unknown, the thing that I have given up so much to pursue and complete.  That day was today.  It started with my dog having an accident in my bedroom at 6am in the morning and I could have taken that as a sign of a bad day to come but I got up and decided that it was a good time to start my daily workout.  I got that done before my boys were even out of bed.  I got them off to school and before I knew it I was late leaving the house and had to change my plans to get a coffee on the way to school.  Again considering that this was a dreaded day, it could have really put me in a foul mood, but I knew that I could do without until class was over and that I would feel much more confident if I was in class early.
I made it to class, with ten minutes to spare and when I looked around the classroom I realized that I did not look any different than my classmates, we were all nervously checking over our books, rearranging our pencils.  That is when I appreciated this minor journey in my bigger path.  I could do this, I could overcome the anxiety in anticipation and when I recognized that I began to appreciate that I had arrived.  I was a student and what a powerful and motivating feeling that left me with for the remainder of today.

Anticipation is a journey that is met so many times in grief.  Anticipation of a death, or of a milestone, like a birthday, due date, etc.  Anticipation is overwhelming around anniversaries, especially the first after the death.  I have always said that anticipation is often worse than the day and usually that is true but respecting the anticipation and honouring the emotions that follow can help in making the dreaded day what it needs to be for that person at that time.
Now I am anxiously awaiting my second day of school as a student.... for now.