Posts tagged ‘death’

Yesterday my lil Pharoah would have been 2 years old had we not lost him to SIDS on October 18, 2007.

When I spoke with my friend Shelly on the phone yesterday morning we chatted about this and that until finally, just as we were saying goodbye, I blurted out that it was Bishop’s birthday and I was having some trouble finding any good to write about for Only the Good Friday. That lovely woman and wonderful friend ordered me to forget about OtGF. In fact, she told me to shut of my computer and grieve. All it took was the concern and empathy in her voice to open the floodgates in me and once my tears began I thought they would never stop.

I took her advice and shut off my Mac for the day and spent the day with my loss, with my pain and grief.

As I decorated my Ancestor Altar, my altar dedicated to my beloved dead, to celebrate the day of his birth I sobbed and screamed and couldn’t seem to stop thinking that I should have been filling the house with balloons and streamers and making sure there was film and batteries in the camera while his birthday cake baked. That I should have been putting the final touches on numerous gaily wrapped presents bought by his doting grandmas with the sole intent of his delight.

Instead I was cleaning and anointing this altar; my altar of the dead. I was scouring the house for 13 candles, placing the tiny silver cup with water and the small plate of salt. I was burning the sacred kyphi incense- “Isis” and “Horus” blends that my friend Carolina sent me, little knowing (yet knowing, all the same), how perfect her gift, how appropriate an offering for my Lil Pharaoh.

I grieved my own loss, and I grieved my precious daughter’s loss. I grieved for the death of babies. I grieved with a raw depth that my numbing depression last year seemed to have covered in a muffling layer of cotton batting. I grieved and gave my grief a voice that I never allowed it to have out of love and respect for my daughter’s grief. I grieved the loss of my daughter’s innocence, and perhaps the loss of her faith.

And as I grieved- as I cried and sobbed, as I screamed and cursed the Gods I began to connect with some small good that could come out of my grief.

Last week for Only the Good Fridays, Candid Karina wrote about a couple of events that she is participating in and one of them is a March of Dimes Walk, March for Babies. The March of Dimes uses 77 cents of every dollar raised in March for Babies to support research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives and to bring comfort and information to families whose baby was born too soon, or sick. Karina’s sponsorship goal is a modest one, only $150. She’s only gotten $20 so far and I offered $10 of that. I’d love to help her make her goal, so if you can find it in your hearts and pockets, why not head over and sponsor her for a dollar or two? If you can’t contribute, why not go to Karina’s and tweet her post or give her a shout out on your own blog?

First Candle is an organization that promotes education and research of SIDS as well as grief and loss support of parents, grandparents and family members. They even have information for friends and family on how to help; what to say and not to say for folks who are unsure of how to best express their condolences in the face of such an heartrending tragedy as the loss of a baby.

I turned to First Candle often in the early stages of my grief. Their information on the “double grief” that Grandparents experiece; not only the loss of your Grandbaby, but the overwhelming powerlessness of not being able to make it all better for your own child- helped me to understand the scope of my grief and reminded me that no matter how it felt, I wasn’t really alone. First Candle is another incredible organization that can use your support in whatever way you can offer it, but in the very least bookmark it. I hope from the bottom of my heart you will never need it yourselves, any of you reading this, but do have it saved to share with anyone who does need it.

And finally my grief yesterday brought me to one more small good. It reminded me that I have decided that Thorne’s World is a place of honesty and reality. That although I would love to suppliment my income with my blog, my first and formost desire and goal is to speak to you from my heart and to be true to my life, philosophy and beliefs.

Perhaps some lost sojourner on the interwebz will find this when she needs to know she is not alone.

So be it.

Peace, out.

Sometimes the Universe speaks to us, ya know?  After my night and talking with my girl this morning, I settled into checking my email and enjoying the many responses to both of my Thursday Thirteen posts, both here and at my new blog, The Eclectic Witch.

I answered one comment by email.  One of my most favoritest bloggers, Janet, had commented over at the new blog, so I fired off an email to her, never thinking for a second that she didn’t know it was me.  We had a good laugh, but the comment got me thinking, and inspired me (in combination with my experiences of the previous night), to write a new post there, entitled  Creating an Ancestor Altar or Altar of Your Dead.

I’ve been recreating this altar recently, and making some small shrines and decorations for it, and had, for some reason, stopped.  I don’t know if it got to be a little overwhelming, or if life-stuff got in the way, or both.  But somebody’s talkin’ and I’m listening.  It’s time for me to finish creating and decorating my new home for my many departed ones, and to celebrate their lives with color and light, with mementos and candles and incense.

I’d love for you to stop by over there.  Not just because I shall supposedly get paid per click in some way that I don’t really understand, but because I’d love to share this with you, my friends, if you’d care to join me.

I posted this image over there, but I just can’t get enough of his sweet face right now, so I’m going to post it here, too.  The image has been transferred onto polymer clay and then surrounded by colorful bits on a candle glass.  I still have to finish polishing it.  But he’s so beautiful… my angel grandson… our Lil Pharaoh.

Peace, out!

When my husband, Jerry, my “soulmale” and love of my life (one of 2… I can’t seem to choose between- and why should I? I have decided that when one dies, I am allowed 2 “Loves of My Life), died in 1998 I grieved.

Of course this loss is so different. Nonetheless the mind continues to seek familiarity. (An effort, perhaps to find some experiential hint on how to proceed).

Well, I could write a book on my grief, my “breakdown” 14 months later, my process and my eventual and ultimate healing, but that’s not the point that is vexing me today. My thoughts keep circling back to what feels like an important part of my current struggle in grieving this loss, the loss of not only my beautiful grandson, Bishop; but the loss of my daughter’s (and perhaps somehow my own??) innocence and heart.

What has occurred to me over and over of late is that there seems to be no place for these losses within my personal identity that fits.

This is so difficult to articulate.

Somehow, over time after my Jerry died, “widow” became not a title or mere description, but a part of my identity.

I was a widow.

It seemed somehow to state clearly who I was and there was some odd comfort and implied strength in that for me. It became part of my identity that I grew to accept and ultimately embrace. I don’t know; perhaps it was all tied up with getting my business off the ground at the time- survival. Perhaps the designation between “widow” and “single woman” was important. I don’t know exactly why it was so; it simply was.

And in some way I think that embracing that as part of who I was at the time, and for the next many ensuing years, was part of my healing process. Somehow it gave me a very clear context within which to place the huge event in my life that was the loss of that beautiful man who meant so much to me. And strange as it may seem, somehow it was a positive thing.

Oh, I’m fumbling and bumbling to express this.

The thing is, there is no context within which to place the loss of my grandbaby and the grief for my daughter. I’m feeling/thinking (one or the other or both- these processes are inextricably enmeshed) that there is simply nothing in these losses to embrace in a positive and affirming way for my identity.

Oh, I’m sure people will mouth (or write) inanities the likes of “you’re so strong, you’ve been through so much, that’s something to embrace”, but that’s not how it feels, and that’s not enough.

Before our Bishop died, I had become pretty disillusioned with the world, politics, human beings in general after all my political activism and blogging and outrage. The stoning of that man and woman somehow seemed to be the final straw for me. It broke my heart and rather than inspire cynicism in me it invoked a sort of despair. I felt defeated. I took a hiatus from blogging to try to find a place in me from which to care, without despairing.

Bear with me.

Our Bishop’s senseless and inexplicable death (SIDS is in no way an explanation) has evoked a hopelessness and despair in me that I can’t seem to kick. It has brought home to me, on a personal level, the chaos and senselessness of a world and existence in which people are stoned to death, murdered for a few dollars, bombed at the whim of one government, starved and gassed at the whim of another, and where babies die for no apparent reason.

An existence in which it had already grown so difficult for me to see “God” (as a very generic term). Perhaps the better term here would simply be “meaning”.

“Existentialist”, “Athiest”- these are not terms that I’m willing to embrace as my identity. “Defeated”, “despairing” are not either.

I can’t seem to find a way to integrate this loss, this experience, these feelings, this grief into my personal identity.

I think that’s a problem.

Chaos reigns and I despair, lost in the void. I need to find my heart, but it seems to be MIA.

*4:03 PM editorial comment:
Writing this and then reading it here in black and white I note that it both falls far short of articulating my feelings and expresses them perfectly. Yet one more paradox of my existence. I should also note that it’s exceedingly difficult to face these feelings this way; outwardly, instead of continuing to be wantonly assaulted with them inwardly (privately). And although this; writing/blogging, is one of several courses of action I’ve decided upon in hope of some movement from this place, it feels pointless. Nonetheless I shall continue.