Grieving Ryan

Four years ago I went to make breakfast and entered a world no one wants to be in. The cost of admission is unimaginable loss. Unimaginable, not in the figurative sense of doomsdayers or dramatizers. Literally unimaginable. Loss so painful that even the most caring, most empathetic souls cannot imagine it. Not the people closest and most trusted, not clergy. The loss of a child is a pain known only by those who have lived it, or something very like it.   On that day four years ago my life was forever changed. A part of my soul became the home of intermingled love and loss, helplessness and rage, regret and gratitude, stages of grief that overlap and loop back and wrap around each other, loneliness like I'd never known, could not have imagined and still can't describe. It's a part of my soul that even my soulmate cannot touch or comfort, try as he might. I learned early that I wasn't quite as alone as I felt. This new world is populated by others. Among the many cards, t...

 Twenty years ago began the task of parenting my second child. With a second baby there is the knowledge of having done it before. The necessary equipment is already in the house. The patterns of feeding and sleeping are familiar. There has been time to think about what parenting is, the choices parents make, and the values to be applied to those choices. With a second child it was easy to feel confident in the illusion that I knew the path ahead.  So it was that I embarked on the journey of parenting Ryan with my eye clearly on the dual goals of providing a joyful childhood and all the preparation needed for a successful, fulfilled adult life. I didn't know then that raising Ryan would be the hardest and most wrenching journey of my life. I walked blindly and happily though the early years of motherhood with a curious, easy-going baby boy who offered no hints of the struggle to come, at least none that I recognized at the time.  As we moved out of the baby stages, I thou...

A year ago I wrote our Christmas Letter for 2022. I wrote of the many events of that year. I wrote of Ryan's death, of grief along with everything else.  This morning I wrote our letter for 2023. I wrote of the things we have done this year, the changes life has brought, the time we spend with our daughters. I finished the draft. As I started breakfast I was thinking about the revisions I'd make and the things I'd left out.  It was then that I realized Ryan wasn't in it and grief poured over me.  I can't decide if he should have been. A Christmas letter is a way to catch up, to remember a year of living and the events and changes that happened in that year.  Ryan wasn't in 2023. If I were to add him to the letter, what would I say? I don't know.  I'm too overwhelmed with what I do know - that Ryan isn't here.  A whole year has happened. I've woken and slept, moved through each day, and none of those days were about Ryan. He didn't turn 19. I ...

I wrote for the first year and then I didn't for a long time. I didn't plan to stop. I expected the writing would fade slowly, a few more days passing between sessions.  There wasn't a reason to stop, or maybe there were many reasons.  A year in, it seemed there was nothing new to say. The feelings weren't evolving, the images that came with them were a repeating scroll. I told myself it would be good for me to write, but I didn't want to, so I told myself I had nothing left to say.  Having moved from the place I lived with him, there was less to remind me, less to bring back memories of him, less to bring up loss and grief. I had found places for the things of his that I chose to keep, all except for the box with his name that stayed taped closed in the closet. It's still taped closed. I haven't faced it yet.  Maybe the biggest reason is that I was so very tired. Grief is exhausting and after a year, I just didn't want to do the work any more. So I didn...

  They say to expect anniversaries to be hard. These are not celebrations with cake and balloons, but they mark the passage of time just the same. A year of life, a year of death, a moment to note as we humans  attempt to make sense of an ever shifting dimension.  But which day is the anniversary? A year ago today, February 15, Ryan said his brief, unclear goodbyes. He miscued his mother so I wouldn't suspect and he swallowed the pills that ended his life.  It was a year ago tomorrow that my world went sideways, that I told his father and his sister. Feb 16 is the date on the death certificate. Legally Ryan ceased to be the moment I told the 911 operator it had happened.  So which day is the anniversary? The day it happened to him? Or the day it happened to me? Which day do I mourn and cry and fall apart? Which day brings it all back as if it were happening right now, as if I'd just held him a moment ago and now he's gone forever? Which day? All of them. 

 I scattered his ashes in a place we both loved. At least he loved it when he loved anything, before the joy slipped away and all that remained was the struggle to get through the day. It's a beautiful place in a part of the country I thought I would never leave again, until I did. I won't be here to visit him two weeks from now when he'll have been gone a year. So I'm here today instead.  Low tide, quiet water, a gentle breeze, and, of course, the damp. The lapping of the waves is overtaken by the roar of war planes doing their maneuvers from the nearby base. Ryan would have loved the planes and hated their noise. You can't cover your ears and run away from them the way he used to do from the blender.  For me they are a symbol of everything wrong in the world - violence, abusive power, greed, convoluted ideas of freedom that mistake the ability to harm for safety. They represent uncounted millions that could have been resourced for helping kids like mine and thousa...

 I've never been a big fan of Valentine's Day. I don't mind the red glitter, though it has haunted my house for months and years following a homeschool party. The wasted paper and pre-diabetic sugar highs are no worse than the other Hallmark holidays. The billions spent on roses, chocolate and various bits of pink and red fluff would be better spent on other things, but so would a lot of other dollars. The worst, really, is the way the holiday creates expectations in relationships that generally do more harm than good.  I've developed a practice of discussing expectations with any potential valentine well ahead of the day. I generally aim for some small observance that is low stress and appropriate to the relationship at hand. If I studiously avoid feeding capitalism, I can generally navigate the day with warmth and connection. It can be nice.  So it was that last year Jamie and I enjoyed a casual early dinner out and a walk around a lake for Valentines. No cards, no gi...

  When women labor in birth, they sometimes become overwhelmed and say, "I don't want to do this any more." as if there is some choice in the matter.  I never got to that place as I labored to birth my babies, but I find myself there now as I labor in his death. Fruitlessly I say, "I don't want to do this any more." I don't want to dissolve into tears at my husband's loving and concerned expression. I don't want to close my eyes for sleep and be flooded with the image of his cold, pale face in death. I don't want to spin through the thousand things I might have done if only I'd known. I don't want every announcement of 988 to echo with "too late, too late, too late." I don't want my stomach to twist with the literally gut-wrenching pain of losing him.  I don't want to wonder if January will forever be a desperate stretch between the holidays he isn't here for and the anniversary of his death in February. I don...

 I started recreating my family photo board today. It's a magnetic board covered collage-style with photos of my children's childhood. Children running, climbing, playing, puzzling, swinging, exploring, and laughing. Their little faces smiling and studious and the occasional smirk. They remind me of the homes we lived in, the places we visited and the people we shared that time with. So many happy memories came flooding back. And it's exhausting.  The tears weren't a surprise. As I gathered the photos and the magnets, I grabbed the tissue box too.  I miss the young man I had breakfast with on February 15, 2022. Even in depression he was a joy to be with. I was incredibly proud of him. I miss the bright child in the photos even more. Over 17 years I captured the moments of joy that came between the tantrums and the pain. The boy on the board had escaped the struggle for a time and become his true self: strategic genius, eager explorer, loving brother, tender animal-lover...

 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...

It's not that grief is intolerable in itself. I would guess it's a lot like my friend who lives with chronic pain. It hurts. It's there. Sometimes it flares and takes over life for a time, but mostly it doesn't. What it does is make everything harder. I'm less good at the things I'm good at. I make the mistakes I make more often. I'm slower to see them and it's harder to fix them.  I feel it most in the space of relationships. My emotional capacity is depleted. Also memory and task management, probably the whole bucket of things they call "executive function".  Of course it lands hardest on the one I'm closest to. Jamie is more with me than anyone has ever been. He pays attention. He cares. He spends hours and hours with me every day and holds me through the night. From the beginning, our relationship has been characterized by deep connection. It happened naturally at is sometimes does when you find your match. Even more, we worked at it. W...

Ryan loved games. At two he could beat me at Memory (the card matching game). By 3 Grandma determined that he was not only smart, but also insanely lucky. He drew more Sorry cards than three other players combined and reveled in their strategic use. He joined the advanced homeschool chess class at age 5 and generally beat opponents twice his age. He didn't care about winning actually.  He loved the strategy of it.  In Carrcasonne he was a spoiler because the most intricate strategies were for taking castles and meadows away from others which often did not result in ending up with the most points. He just loved the puzzle.  Ryan learned basic math facts by tallying Monopoly properties. We covered probability formulae and thus exponents when he asked which of two game scenarios would be more likely. He'd played the game at a friend's house and I didn't know anything about it, but he was still noodling days later, so he asked Mom. He loved to figure out the best possible p...

I think this is guilt. This heaviness that pulls at me when I think of the life I had before and the life I have now.  Three years ago Ryan and I moved into our new apartment, the one he chose. He helped decide where to put the furniture and carried boxes up the stairs. It was a space where we could make a life together, and we did. It wasn't easy for all that we loved each other. We had different ways of living. Parenting teens is never simple. Connecting with Ryan was particularly hard.  Yesterday I walked out of that apartment for the last time. I thought of all the life that happened there. And the death. I remembered the pain of being unable to connect with him both before and after he stopped breathing. I remembered meeting Jamie in that same space and thought of the joy and partnership in my life now, of the ease of living with the man I love.  Who wouldn't choose the easy joy of newlywed life over the struggle of raising a depressed teen? A mother wouldn't. I didn...

  A year ago I had them together. The twin blonde heads that for so many years bent together over a newfound wonder, bobbed side-by-side in a shopping cart, knocked against each other as only siblings can and then looked out for each other.  A year ago they talked and laughed together, and then I never saw them together again.  Thanksgiving was the same as ever: Grandma's golden bird and fluffy mashed potatoes. The steamed carrots the grandkids like - the ones Ryan once ate until he started turning orange on a diet we hoped would help him heal. The same dog with silky ears that grounded him when he could stand to be with us. The same two cats that kept him company when the people were too much for him as the dog was for them and they all retreated to the back room.  I knew he wasn't well, but I didn't know how to give him the help he claimed he didn't need, and I didn't know how urgently he needed it.  Ryan was still here a year ago, still laughing, still smilin...

Anacortes is the place I came when I left my old life. I drove away from two decades of friendships built and communities connected. I left behind the homes and parks and hiking trails where I had raised my babies and I headed west.  Skagit County had received my mother, my brother and I after her marriage ended before my fourth birthday. We lived on the beach and tromped through muddy sand. We lived at the lake in a drafty cabin just up the driveway from my first best friend. We lived in small town LaConner where I walked to kindergarten and feasted on raspberries in my mothers garden. My life grounded in the saltwater beaches and evergreen forests of this land.  It became the place that has always felt like home to me.  Marriages, first my mother's second and later my first, led me away from this place.  I was away most of a decade before I came back the first time.  When I left again I made sure to come back often. Maybe that's why I never rooted in Atlanta d...

Eight months later, I'm thinking of him as much as ever. As much as when he was here, as much as just after he left.  I walk by Subway, his favorite meal out. I remember the covid months when there was a "Now Hiring" sign in the window and I hoped it would be his first job.   I pass the frozen pizza case at Costco, or the pallet of apple juice. I pause, internally reaching to load my cart with his favorites.  We go out for a walk and I pass the church parking lot where I took him for his first driving lesson. I remember how he grinned and chuckled when I suggested it would be better not to run into the lone light pole in the middle of the empty lot. I captured that grin, the last photo I have of pure authentic joy.  I see kids on their way to the high school and wish he was with them. The career tech building where he went for the program he loved is on the way to the water. I hoped it would save him.  The two lane road where he practiced lane changes, agai...

I have wonderful clients who often say affirming things to me.  Recently one said, "Karen is my model for patience."  It startled me. Patience is not a trait I think of related to myself, and yet I can see why she sees it.  She's known me as a consultant, a facilitator, a holder of space. In that role, patience is required, so it is a thing that I do. More specifically, it is a thing that I have learned to do, a skill I can put on like a part of a uniform to do the work that I do. It is not an innate part of my personality. I wasn't born patient. I arrived in the world passionate, demanding, insistent and stubborn, determined that the truth be told, that action follow truth, that the right thing be done.  Over years, through painful lessons, I came to understand that the right thing isn't always the best thing, that truth is elusive and chameleon. Truth is individual and joint at the same time. I discovered that caring for people is far more about hearing them and...