A Season of Grief and Thanksgiving
It was exactly a year ago this week that my partner and I headed to Boston to be with my older son who was scheduled for open heart surgery. I wasn’t prepared for it to be full of both grief and thanksgiving.
The day was framed with his ambitious plan to be home in a week in time for Thanksgiving, (after a quadruple bypass,) and my understanding was that this would be a high-risk surgery that might require a bit longer stay.
But I was not prepared for what would happen.
Andy left for Boston the day before with his younger brother to get the requisite presurgical testing done and enjoy a New England dinner at a local diner. The last words he spoke to me before he headed south were “Don’t let me die.”
I packed a suitcase and microwaveable food for a couple of days’ stay at the hotel across the street from the hospital, unable to erase the sound of those four words from my ears.
As it turned out, those words would be two-month-long marching orders for two surgical teams, a cadre of intensive care nurses, and several respiratory therapists as they employed high-tech interventions for a heart that continued to pump but a pair of lungs that had given up their call to action.
How do you balance a curve ball of grief and thanksgiving?
The adage of ‘take life one step at a time’ is too big. It becomes ‘take one breath at a time.’
Everything I thought was important I shelved. I had a job to do but I had no idea what that was.
The only thing he had asked of me was to not let him die.
I felt totally impotent.
And useless.
And afraid.
My son was held together by tubes and machinery and strangers. I was held together by grace.
None of us gets out of this world without dying, and few of us get out of this world without saying goodbye to a loved one unexpectedly.
This feeling of impotence and fear is but a breath away for any one of us, impacting our health, our sleep, our relationships, and sometimes our livelihood. It goes by a more common name. The name is grief.
I sat with a friend recently who lost her husband of 66 years. A previously active homemaker and gardener she now stares out her window at the changing seasons as she puts many miles on an old walnut rocker.
How many miles must an old woman rock before she knows she is home? Can you hear that to the melody of “Blowin’ in the Wind?”
If I had had a rocking chair those two months in Boston I might have done exactly the same.
You see, there is no work that is more important than grief.
What appears to others as idleness, depression or laziness is actually hard work.
To be still, letting fear, loneliness, regrets, unfilled dreams, sorrow and anger all finish their dance in the marrow of your bones is more difficult than labor in childbirth.
But most of us forget about that when we go through something that rips our heart out.
I know I spent countless hours just sitting.
There was so much I could have been doing. Like writing blog posts or working on a new project I had just started. Even paying bills.
But I sat.
I sat in the waiting room until I could tell you exactly how many holes were in the acoustical tile ceiling.
I sat in the hotel room with Dekker on my feet, waiting until visiting hours would begin.
I sat listening to the traffic outside the window.
And I listened…
I listened to my heart beat.
I listened to an inner voice that wanted to condemn me for being an imperfect mother, for all the things I wish I hadn’t done in life, and then
I listened to the Sirens: of “If only.”
If only I had insisted my son (now 50, mind you) watch his diet, get more exercise, never take up smoking.
If only I had been there when he was 7 (or 14 or 23…) and needed me. If only___________fill in the blank. Almost any dumb thing is a lyric for the ‘If onlys.’
Don’t let anyone tell you that there is a right way to grieve.
For some of us, sitting and remembering and beating on oursleves is the path through grief.
For some, splitting wood, long hikes up steep mountains, and swearing at trees seems to be the path.
Others may turn to writing or art and create some of the deepest work of their lives.
It’s all good, for there is an end to a path of grief if we let it do its dancing within us without interference.
I was raised with a New England ethic of “be strong, keep a stiff upper lip and in times of difficulty tie a knot and hang on.”
This advice had some positive results in terms of staying productive, but it did nothing to make me a healthier, more compassionate listener, which I have always yearned to be.
Compassion comes when we are able to feel. Oh how I wish there were an easier path!
And so, I spent two months with absolutely nothing to do but feel.
I am grieved that my son went through this.
I am grateful that I was able to take that time to sit. And feel. And weep. And pray. And sit some more.
In the months since he first opened his eyes, learning to communicate by writing, learning to swallow all over again, learning to walk and talk (which he does with great joy!) and drive his tractor to mow his neighbor’s lawns, I get the joy of taking him to frequent medical appointments for some lingering difficulties. His only comment about a hand that doesn’t open well, and some residual weakness is “It’s OK. It is really OK. I am alive and that’s what counts!
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