Grieving Ryan

 Today someone told me a bit about their life. They are the parent of a depressed and distant teen. They "know better than to push". They invite and hope and hurt when the one they love remains withdrawn.  I've been there. I've walked that road. I want to commiserate, to say I know what you are going through. I want to reassure them that they are doing all they can, to add my experience to theirs. But I can't. My story will only make their life worse. It won't help them to know how I reassured myself that he'd never been suicidal on the very day he was swallowing the pills, perhaps even the same hour. They don't need to hear how many times I didn't push, how many painful invitations I offered and how I forgave myself (and forgive myself still) for the times I couldn't bring myself to invite rejection again, the times I didn't know what was best, when the best I could do was to honor his wishes and hope for a better day. There is no good to ...

 We had a lovely holiday. Jamie and I had both our girls with us and we gelled as a family of four for the first time. We baked and cooked and ate and told stories of past lives, creating the start of shared traditions. We spoke easily of our memories. I teared up when we talked about Ryan, but I stayed present, I remained myself. As the girls left it all shifted. It's as though time turned back to February, to the first days of life after his life, with my gut in knots and my chest constricted. I don't know what I want or need. I can't remember what I'm doing. I don't seem to be where I am. Jamie reaches out for me, and there is so little here, so little available to reach back with. I reappear for moments when I'm needed, when Megan is here, or for no reason I can tell. Just as mysteriously I dissolve into tears, shake, sob, and my whole body tries to work through this impossible pain with no apparent success.  For ten months writing has eased the grief when i...

 Facebook carries bits of past life back to me, snippets that I chose to share with the world as events occurred. It is a window into happy times and sometimes sad times. It is a way to remember. This week there was a celebratory post. Ryan had been free of stomach pain for three days. He was eight. My best guess is that he had been in pain most of those eight years. What was new was my awareness of it.  We had been gluten free for years and he had reported feeling better. As we continued to struggle with violent outbursts and rigid refusals, somehow it occurred to me to ask him specifically about stomach pain. I taught him the pain scale that no child should ever need to know. I asked him, casually every day to rate his pain, and he told me. Some days one. Some days two. Never distressed. Never expecting me to do anything about it. No indication that this was anything but ordinary for him.  It was a slow awakening. Day by day, the matter-of-fact report of pain, so much a...

It's easy to say that Ryan will always be part of me. A day will come when I easily speak  of the learning he brought me, the wisdom gathered in mothering this intelligent, determined, problem-solving comic.  It's something else to name that grief will always be part of me. Missing Ryan, hurting with his memory, treasuring the awareness of him and the pain it brings, these are not just things I do. They are part of my identity. When that pain is hidden, part of my self is unseen, secret, unacknowledged. Certainly, there are times not to speak of it, but they are rare. More often, like any secret identity, being unseen comes at a cost. The secret becomes it's own presence, a distraction. It takes up space and draws on energy.   This is why it feels so strange when people follow the impulse that I would have followed before I knew: the impulse not to make me cry. People don't know what to do with grief. When it arrives in a room folks go quiet, or change the subject. I...