Grieving Ryan

  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...

 I am a thinker, a knower of things, a problem solver, a writer. When feelings arrive and threaten to overcome me, I turn them into words, I create frames of thought, I form action plans. But today there are no more words, no new frames, nothing to do, nothing to say. All that remains is to feel.  Sad.  Deeply, utterly, unbearably sad. 

 I don't want to think about the day he died. I don't want to hear the pain in his voice when he said, "It's just so hard." I don't want to feel my palms beating against his door as the alarm sounded and nothing moved on the other side, as I began to know and yet still hoped. I don't want to see the line of blood from the corner of his lips. I don't want to remember his death, though I do every day.  I want to remember his life.   So today, I will tell you a story of his life, a moment I would have forgotten but for my compulsive picture taking and a photo that lives on a bulletin board at the bottom of the stairs where I see it every day. I love it because it is such a natural picture.  He didn't know I was taking it. His smile is pure authenticity.  We were at an arboretum with the grandparents and cousins. The cousins, as usual, were inseparable, having a fabulous time.  Grandpa was along for the ride, and frequently would find a bench on which ...

I went back out into the world for the first time.  It's different to be with people in person. There are hugs and small talk and unplanned conversations.  You run into people you've known for years but never met. I lost count of how many people said to me, "Congratulations . . . and condolences." And the people who didn't know but stumbled into the subject so that the easiest thing for me to say was, "I lost my son in February and got married in April." And the easiest thing wasn't easy. Joy and grief don't cancel each other out. They coexist in the strangest of contradictions.  Sometimes feeling one strongly makes me less aware of the other for a time, but only for a time. Then it comes back, often stronger than before. Being in rooms full of strangers and friends is different.  It numbs the feelings. I hold my professionalism, I tell my stories and teach my lessons. I tuck the emotions safely away, not in hiding, just not expressed. I expected...

People ask me how I'm doing and I tell them, "Pretty well, except when I'm not." Not is less and less often. I've thought a lot about why I'm doing as well as I am.  Of course there are a lot of reasons, but one that stands out in particular: wealth and privilege .  As I have made my way through these last months, as I found him and called the police, as I made arrangements for his cremation and memorial, as I traveled to Atlanta; I did not, even once, wonder how I would pay for it all.  I didn't fear that the police would see my color and make assumptions. I didn't wonder if he had killed himself because I had failed to provide for him.   When I looked at grief head on and saw a long road before me, I cut back on my work and didn't worry about my income.  Because of many accidents of birth and circumstance, because of dozens or hundreds of happenings outside my control, I happen to have privileges of race and wealth and education that allowed me t...

Some days are harder than others. Sometimes there is not a reason. Sometimes there is. Today there is a reason. Today I explained to the deputy coroner that the part of the autopsy report where she described what I had said to her on the worst day of my life was simply wrong.  It might not matter to someone else. The real facts and her supposed facts all point in the same direction. The conclusion is no different. The toxicology report, his stomach contents, the diagnoses from his psychiatrist tell the tale. As far as I can tell they got all of that right. It may not matter that the deputy coroner manufactured a diagnosis of ADHD and a visit from Atlanta friends that never happened.  It matters to me. Truth has always been important to me. Many stages of my life would have been easier if I had been willing to tell the lie that made everyone comfortable. I didn't seek comfort in lies when I was 5, and I cannot countenance being misrepresented in a public document as I approach ...

 I called the coroner today. Four and a half months ago they said it would take two or three months for his bloodwork to come back from the state lab and confirm the expected toxicology. I hadn't heard from them. It took me weeks to gather the courage or strength or whatever it was I had today that I didn't have dozens of other times I told myself I'd call.   The report from the lab was on file, but in a too-busy office it took my call to prompt the completion of the autopsy report. A young compassionate voice called me back to tell me what they had found. No surprises. Lots of big words: Intoxication by  . . .  lots of syllables I can't remember, four drugs I think.  Now I'm watching the mail for the document that will give it to me in writing. Actually, I'm watching the mail for two documents. The honorary diploma that marks Ryan's accomplishment in high school is coming too. Honorary because he didn't complete the last required half credit in English....