Silver Linings
Somewhere in the first day of After I discovered that interspersed with the pain and sadness, pleasure and joy still exist. I know that some people feel guilty about that joy, that it feels somehow disloyal to relish a ray of sunshine or a tasty meal. It occurred to me to wonder if I should go ahead with a wedding so soon after his death. For me that part was easy. Yes, of course I would continue to have joy in my life. Yes to the wedding as planned, yes to enjoying tasty meals and soaking in the sunshine of spring.
The silver linings were harder. As my mind raced ahead in the early hours of After, being hit with one implication after another, I began to notice that alongside the dark, hard things, there were bright spots too. The painful awareness that Ryan would never graduate was followed by the joy that I could attend Megan's end of year show without leaving him behind at school. The horror I felt as I realized the impact Ryan's death would have on his dear friends didn't prevent me from grasping that I would no longer have to set an alarm to make his breakfast.
As the thoughts arrived unbidden, one after the other, unfiltered for ease or for pain, I felt instinctively that before I could enjoy the ease I had to affirm the pain. Every time I said, even to myself, that there were ways in which After would be easier, I felt compelled to preface it with grief and loss.
I decided that first day that I was going to grab hold of all the warmth and light I could find, including the ways in which Ryan's death made life more comfortable. I began to think of them as silver linings. It was an intentional decision to hold the good next to the bad. It's taken a recurring force of will to slow down the explanations and simply feel the relief and lightness when they come. Still even now, I cannot tell you of my silver linings without defending my comfort with grief.
I will say to you here that I hate what Ryan did. I'd give anything to have him back, just as he was, and more than I have if I could make him happy. Ryan chose a path for us that I would never have chosen. I miss him every day. I mourn his bright smiles, the softness of his hair, the way he'd leave empty cereal boxes in the cupboard and pile dirty clothes all over his floor. I miss my son desperately. Losing him has disabled me as nothing else ever could. And that isn't the whole story.
Alongside all of that grief, I am holding the impossible truth that Ryan's choice gifted me with an ease and freedom I would never have chosen. I am naming the silver linings and embracing their comfort.
The empty nesting life I'd been looking forward to has arrived early. It's nice to ease into my days without an alarm that tells me to make his breakfast and see him off to school. As Jamie's work returns to a pre-Covid travel schedule I'm grateful for the freedom to travel with him. I'm looking forward to spending more time in Vermont with my amazing daughter. Life is simply easier without a teen at home. Logistics are less complicated. I no longer stack the freezer with frozen pizzas I'll never eat.
They seem like small things these little bits of convenience that I'd happily trade away for one more day with Ryan. They are small things, but there are bigger things too that are harder to say.
There is a lightness in After that still catches me by surprise. There is a sense of having set down a weight that was far heavier than I realized as I was carrying it. The grief and loss are more painful, but they are less heavy, less taxing than mothering a violent child or a withdrawn teen. I still wake in the night consumed by my son, but it is no longer the exhausting mix of determination and guilt, impotent love and repeated failure. It's no longer being torn between pushing him to do what seems best to me and supporting him in what seems best to him. It's not gathering energy from a depleting supply to knock on his door for one more attempt to help him.
For most of two decades a part of me has been working, searching, fighting for an answer for my son while bracing for the next tantrum, the next level of withdrawal, the next painful encounter. I've lived on high alert, either actively struggling for his health, or battling regret to grieve the life I could not give him. Ryan's death is the worst of my fears come true and a final gift from a loving son, a relief to us both.
In this darkest of clouds, I grant myself the warmth of silver linings.
I love your jarring honesty, Karen. The candour with which you share the rawest of truths is itself a silver lining in an otherwise grey world. Continued prayers for eyes that see the silver lining.
ReplyDeleteThank you. Your ability to hold silver light and deepest dark together - with no judgement- is a challenge and an invitation which I appreciate deeply.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your reflections, Karen. They stirred a number of thoughts in me - for example, my own battle with depression when I was 16 & 17 years old. I remember how it descended on me over the period of a few weeks - like a brown cloud.
ReplyDeleteYour grief/relief parallels my own experience of my parents' deaths.
Someone once asked Margaret Mead what she thought was the first evidence of humans developing a civilization. Her answer was not, "such and such a building" but rather a skeleton with a femur fracture that had healed. It meant that someone had splinted and taken care of that person - carried her somewhere to mend and cared for her. A person with a femur fracture cannot survive alone. You did not just abandon Ryan somewhere. You are not abandoning him after his death. You are also not abandoning you!