Patience to Endure

Tag: mental health

  • The Wall

    The Wall

    I have heard grief described as waves in the ocean, elevators, rubberband balls, and roller coasters. It is all those things at once.

    Grief isn’t just an analogy. It is raw. It is ruthless. It is reckless. It is my temporary reality.

    Grief is crying seeing the walls where you made them dirty. I can see the marks where your fingers left streaks. We have never had clean walls. In fact, when I picked paint out for the house it was the kind that was easy to clean. You always wiped whatever was on your hands along the wall. Now it is an artistic masterpiece, and I never want to wash that wall again.

    Grief is crying because Steve brought home bundt cakes and I knew you would have loved this new flavor. They are lemon flavored with blackberry filling. I would have mashed it up and added pudding. You would have squealed with excitement and eaten every last bite. How you loved food. Life is now used to and would have.

    Grief is making your baby brother’s sandwich for lunch and forgetting to put the turkey, so the poor child ate a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich for lunch. It robs me of the ability to perform the simplest of tasks.

    Grief is being exhausted even though I had two cups of coffee and have done nothing exerting yet. It changes the definition of exerting and some days sitting up might as well be a marathon. It is sleeping at night only with the help of medication.

    Grief is searching the home for pieces of you still here, some evidence other than my memory.

    She always comes too soon and leaves much too late. She is rude.

    Grief is good at making me let go too though. Perhaps the carrying of it makes me drop other things I should not have carried so long anyway. Unforgiveness, resentment, petty differences are too burdensome. Grief monopolizes my ability to carry.

    There is an odd kindness to her. She would not be here had the love not existed. The love you created and received is proportional to her weight and as of now, it is too heavy to bear. But “they” promise me as I learn to carry it, the load changes. The indomitable truth is that your love, both given and received, will never lose weight. Even as grief fades, your love will always exist. Love wins.

    It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. (Lou Holtz)

    Sweet boy, I am hoping to learn to carry it. I will make you proud. But first, I have to remember to put turkey in your brother’s sandwich.

  • Empty

    Empty

    It is another beautiful day, sweet boy. I feel a little steadier today. Still so very sad and lost but steady in this place.

    Steve took me to the Overlook Produce to look at plants. I was afraid of how I might react when I saw Buc-ees across the street. How you loved that place! You would sign “mouse” and “cheese” to let me know when you wanted to go there which was more often than we could. You were so clever and thought Buc-ee was a mouse and knew it sounded like “cheese”. You had your own language and I was privileged to understand.

    We would get your favorite banana pudding and drive to the Harrisonburg Mall. I would intentionally park at the Old Navy entrance so you would have to use your walker the full length of the mall to the food court. You were always very food motivated. You would sit there and enthusiastically eat every bite while waving to people around us. I will forever remember the staccato movements you would use to scoop the pudding to get as much as possible in one spoonful.

    As we drove today I felt an emptiness. It is always present but this was different. From the years of helping with Grief Share I often heard people speak of the relief that came when they didn’t have to intensely care for someone any longer. They weren’t happy their loved one was gone but they felt a sense of alleviation to not have the responsibility.

    I looked out the window at the mountains in the distance. I didn’t have that feeling I held for twenty-four years. Even when you were in school or we were apart I never settled. At night I slept lightly always with the ringer on because I knew at any moment you might need me. You were ever present in all I did. I was always at the ready and now that I find no relief to no longer be.

    I find it empty in this place. The awful emptiness where something valuable and important was and now nothing remains.

    I got home and the basement door was open. You are gone and now we don’t need to be sure you can’t access the stairs. Scissors lay gently on the coffee table where they could never be for fear of you finding them and getting hurt. I no longer scan the floor a thousand times a day seeking small objects you could ingest. Almost a quarter of a century of diligence all for you are no more.

    There is no relief. Only a vast emptiness where the hypervigilance once sat and never slept. See, in that space was where I loved you best, where I protected you from anything that could harm you. The two things, however, my sweet boy, I could not protect you from was your own body and God’s timing.

    To me, they were both beautiful and awful and merciful and cruel. I miss you endlessly

  • Unpack

    Unpack

    It is a beautiful day today, sweet boy. The kind of day you would sit on the swing and with furious determination scroll through your Ipad.

    I managed to catch up on watering plants and even repotted a couple. Still, most of the day was spent on the couch unpacking the medical trauma from two weeks ago and, of course and always, missing you.

    We got to the hospital on February 17th around 11:00 am. As we waited for them to call us back you were feeling well enough to be ticked off. They drew some bloodwork, got you a room, and started IV medication and fluids. After a few hours you were moved to a different part of the emergency room where the stable patients went until a bed opened. You were supposed to go to the general medicine floor. Even the medical professionals could not see and lab work hid how sick you really were.

    Around 11:30 pm it all began happening so fast that I didn’t know what was happening even as it was happening.

    He is in A-fib. We are moving him to the part of the ED where the ICU trained staff is.

    As soon as she finished her sentence a team descended and whisked you out of the room. We have been in the hospitals enough to know rushing teams is not good.

    You were taken into the resuscitation room with an unsettling brisk pace. At least twenty people went in the room. It was the same room they took Grandpa into by ambulance 2 years before… My heart sank.

    What is happening?

    Let me get you a chair.

    What is happening with my son?

    When they do not answer your question you know you do not want to hear the answer.

    I peaked in your room

    Your blood pressure was 60/40. You were pale. You were dying. I begged you to stay.

    Please come sit down.

    Afib….Low blood pressure. Cardioversion. Shock. Could die…

    Where is Mom?

    I see her standing in the hallway lost. She looked so small and so scared, not the feisty woman I know.

    Can you get my mom a chair?

    We are conferring. He may need cardioversion to shock his heart. In rare cases it can cause cardiac arrest.

    I fall to my knees. Head bowed. Hands clasped.

    Please God, one more time, let me keep my son.

    My mom calls her best friend on the phone. It is midnight. Her friend comes immediately.

    I call Steve. He is crashing. Please come.

    A nurse kneels next to us.

    I don’t know much because he just got here but I will answer what I can.

    Finally someone is speaking to us.

    I look in the room again. His blood pressure is 50/30

    We are pushing a lot of fluid.

    A social worker appears. Do you need a chaplain?

    The only time they call a chaplain is when someone is dying. I decline.

    The fluids seemed to be helping. Cardioversion postponed. They take you to the ICU.

    Over the next few days I would see only small glimpses of you. You were on a lot of medication. I began missing you already.

    The next big trauma would begin on February 21st and would be your last.

    No more shocks to the heart, sweet boy. No more infections or failing valves. No more cascading dominoes. Not for you, anyway. Mommy is trying so hard every day to keep one domino up. I just need one to stay stable. It often teeters but I will not relent. You taught me well. I will make you proud.

    the wish

    to be with you there

    sits on one side of me.

    the desire to make you proud here

    sits on the other.

    and between them

    I’ll sway

    until i have both.

    sara rian, find me there

  • In the clearing…

    In the clearing…

    Here it is. A decade has passed since I found Gary in the woods dead from a single gun shot. Time is a strange thing post trauma and I’ve covered a lot of ground since then. The day is now, mostly, an historical remembrance more than an emotional one. For my children though it is a nightmare of a day to get through and that breaks my heart more than anything.

    Gary didn’t have a long history of depression. There were no “classic” signs he was going to do what he did. What he did have was a long history of battling addiction. 

    Ten years before his death he was prescribed percocet for severe tendonitis. As a maternal fetal medicine specialist taking time off to nurse his injury just wasn’t possible. What began as an innocent prescription was, unknowingly at the time, my first step into hell that included driving him 18 hours through the night to rehab where he stayed for three months and ended with me finding him in the woods.

    Upon discharge Gary had access to the best group and private therapies. He was followed for five years by the Health Practitioners Intervention Program. What he didn’t have was the freedom to battle his disease in the light.

    Shame, judgement, and stigma made that simply impossible. Imagine a boxer equipped with the most advanced protective gear and a heart to win but being put in a ring in absolute darkness. Yet the foe he battles only grows and thrives in the dark. His strength is fed by what the fighter can not share and others can not see.

    And so he lost. Many of the people in his group therapy all those years ago lost. My children lost. God lost the opportunity to redeem his situation. And He would have. He always does.

    The “addict” is someone’s father, son, physician, teacher, husband. They aren’t as portrayed on television. They are from all classes and many put on a suite and tie or scrubs or a judges robe every day. They love their families. They want to be in recovery. The addict might even be you.

    On this day, the tenth anniversary of his death, my prayer is a post like this might bring a little light to the other boxers still in the ring swinging madly in the dark. I hope they hear my voice cheering them on and not the voices of discouragement and judgement. I hope a seed is planted for the person reading this who is fortunate enough to not know addiction the way I do and the seed will grow compassion. Though they may not know it, chances are they love a person with addiction. My prayer is the person fighting who is reading this would have the courage to bear light themselves and help change the notion addiction only plagues degenerates. They would have the courage to say “my name is…and I am an addict.”

    They are busy fighting addiction, a formidable and relentless enemy. May we who are not wearing the gloves fight shame, stigma, and judgement for them. May we hold the light and shout words of love and encouragement while they fight for their lives.  I am convinced their foe will shrivel in the light if we just have the courage to shine it steadily, brightly, and boldly for them.  

    May we help change the perception that they are junkies squatting in an abandoned house. They are boxers in the ring. They are fighting. And with our help maybe, just maybe they can win 

    (more…)

  • Soul Healing

    Soul healing is messy business. When I think of healing, my mind automatically goes to that of someone who needs to take it easy. I see someone resting in a bed somewhere. I don’t imagine the grueling hours of therapy. I don’t think of the sweat and the pain just desperately trying to get back to wherever you once were. 

    I like to identify with the type of healing that is passive. The type where you just lay back and let it happen to you.

    Soul healing is active. It is painful. It is humbling. It is admitting you have wounds that exist and scars that didn’t heal properly. Sometimes you have to excise those scars to get the infection out. That means opening up all that festered and became rotten. It necessarily stings. It downright hurts. It is exhausting. You would just rather let it be. 

    Ignoring it though doesn’t mean it isn’t there and growing in strength. It will still display its existence in the form of an unkind word or a broken promise or inability to be vulnerable and truly let someone in. It will infect another. An unhealed soul is contagious and does its best to damage others.

    Lean into it. Do the work. Admit when you are wrong. Make amends to those you have harmed. Forgive those who caused the broken part of you even if they never apologized. Forgive yourself. It isn’t yours to carry. Put it down.

    You deserve to heal. You deserve peace. The people you love and have yet to love deserve a healed you.

    Don’t be passive when it comes to your soul. Take time to cry. Rest. Seek professional help. Join a support group. Put in the sweat not to get back to where you once were but to not yield until you find a glorious new normal. And don’t ever let them tell you the damage is done whether it was to you or by you. You get to decide. It is your choice and I hope you choose to rehabilitate your soul.

    “Wounds don’t heal the way you want them to, they heal the way they need to. It takes time for wounds to fade into scars. It takes time for the healing process to take place. Give yourself that time. Give yourself that Grace. Be gentle with your wounds. Be gentle with your heart. You deserve to heal.” – Del Olanubi