Thanksgiving Day ~from 11/26/98~

It’s Thanksgiving Day, and even though I am grateful for many things, I am besieged by my memories of last year, the day I took my last picture of Seth and little Lora.  I am filled with an emptiness. What a paradox, to be filled with emptiness!

And I remember playing cards with him and the family.  And we had so much fun! He had stayed longer than usual.  He was happy to be with us. And I was so glad to see him moving out of his introversion, in which he always retreated to after the holiday meal, back into his solitude.

As I prepared to bring the candles to my brother and sister-in-law’s house to the meal, I had to face the physical absences in our family.  After my dad died over 6 years ago, I had been in a grief group that had suggested placing a lit candle at the table to represent your loved one being with you in spirit.

Three years later, we had two candles, one for Dad, and one for my cousin’s wife, Ginny, who had been like a big sister to me since I was a kid.  We had spent every holiday together since she started going steady with my cousin, thirty-some years ago. At fifty-one, she had died in a car accident.

Two years to the day later, my dear Uncle Joe died.  He had also spent holiday meals with us, and was always so good to me.

Five months after that, my dear, sweet, little Aunt Fran died, after many painful years with rheumatoid arthritis.  We didn’t want her to continue to suffer, but her absence leaves a hole in our lives.

And four months later, eight months ago today, my Seth died at the age of twenty-one as a result of a auto accident. Three deaths in nine months is what we have endured.  No wonder it seems so sad.

Only two weeks after Seth died, we celebrated our first holiday, Easter.  And that’s when I realized how devastating five deaths in our small family was.  There were five candles in the room with us.

We are going to be okay.  But, sometimes, I just feel like crying and crying, because I miss my “missing” family.  And I still have trouble believing that Seth is really gone from this world. He was my baby.  I nursed him and sang to him and played with him. He was grown and happy and I just feel cheated somehow.  I can’t help it. It’s the way I feel. I guess i have a LOT more crying to do. That’s just the way it is.

God help me if I just can’t be thankful all the time.  I want to, but this Thanksgiving has been hard. The grandchildren were a total delight!  And I love my wonderful family so much. My husband and daughter, and mother, and brother, and sister-in-law and cousins and guests were all so sweet and the day was so nice.

But I just couldn’t stay any longer.  I had to be able to sit and cry, and not try to hold myself together anymore.  I know they understand.

I wish I could find the peace that I know is here, within my own heart.  But today, my grief has engulfed me in a dark cloud of sadness, because I long for what can never be again.

 

 

Since today is Veteran’s Day, I decided to post this excerpt from my book, How I Survived the First Year~a mother’s journey of grief.  I am not trying to equate the experiences of another person’s grief with mine, for each one is different.  But loss and grief are universal. And if my grief can help me understand yours, even a little, then we are not so alone in our struggles.  We can hopefully support each other in our times of loss. And that is my goal.Thank you.Lora Marie Wade

Veteran’s Day

11/11/98

It’s Veteran’s Day.

Today I fought a new battle with my grieving soul.

Caught off guard by the confidence of my newly acquired peaceful feelings,

I fell into a land mine of newspaper articles,

buried under the mountain of my unsorted paperwork.

The words of the headlines,

“Fatal Crash”

“Driver drowns after car plunges into river,”

flew out at me,

raining like gunfire

on the battlefield of my basement office.

I am shell-shocked.

I had been recovering quite well, as of late.

But one cannot be ready for every sneak attack.

One cannot always be prepared for war.

It defeats the process of peace.

And, peace is what I’m after.

It is there.

It’s always there, yet so difficult to hang onto.

To keep.

The struggle to find it,

and then keep it alive,

continually reemerges to challenge me again and again.

The rawness of my grief is still so fresh,

like a soldier’s open wound in the field of combat.

I have something else in common with those veterans of war.

We have all survived,

but not unscathed.

And the suffering is not over.

We still search for the peace that will set us all free,

and lead us home,

for good.

 

In this day and age, we need to think about the prejudices we all have.  When left to our own devices, we create a world view based only on our own experiences.  The proliferation of prejudices has exponentially grown in number and intensity. Fear-mongering and intolerance are spreading like crazy.  These sentiments, and the ubiquitous use of negative “isms” has made the world a dangerous place for many people. Racism, sexism, ageism, nationalism, anti-antisemitism, nativism  and cronyism are some of the “isms” we hear or read about on a regular basis.  Homophobia and xenophobia have become rampant and people have joined together in hatred of the “other.” Our culture has become mean-spirited.  The actions committed in the name of these hatreds are more than menacing. They rip at the fabric of our humanity and threaten to destroy us.

These attitudes are found in multiple places in the world.  It has become acceptable to hate each other, even though every religion and all good people know better.  The teachings of all the major religions of the world are in harmony with the things that make us good people.  Caring for one another, loving our neighbor, feeding the poor, taking care of the unfortunate and being responsible for our actions, are all agreed upon as the right way to live a good life in our shared society.

It saddens me to see what we are becoming as human beings.  I know that hatred has existed forever in all of history, but we must not succumb to acts of hatred and division.  In unity, things are better for everyone. We, each of us, can become forces for good or evil. And there are many degrees of all the actions that we take, or don’t take.  But, being in a world where we believe that peace is possible, and where inclusion can become commonplace, starts within each person. And, that means you and me. What happens next is in our hands.  The decisions we make today, will decide our collective future.  We have so much to gain and too much to lose if our actions don’t work for the good of us all.  We have important choices to make and things we must do to bring them about. We must choose wisely.

The day my son died, I began to feel the incredible power of prayer in a more dramatic way than ever before.  I just knew that the prayers of people who knew me and loved me, even people I didn’t know, were sending messages of love to God for me and my family.  I experienced graces that were so overwhelming at times, that I could scarcely believe it.  

As my life continued after that, I found that even my own prayers for others were as powerful. This is because we have nothing to do with it. By this I mean, that no person has the power to do this on their own.  It is the spirit of loving intention that matters. Just the doing of it, is powerful. But it is not because we are powerful.  Prayer is.

Prayer is pure, positive, loving intention.  It can only bless, because that is the essence of prayer. It is of God, not us. We are only the vessels from which it is poured.

My father had a serious accident when he was in the contracting business.  This must have been almost 45 years ago. He had been hit in the head by a second story beam of a school building he was working on.  The beam had somehow become dislodged. He should have never survived it. It was a miracle that he recovered. But even more amazing, he didn’t have any residual effects, other than headaches that went away after a year.

At the same time that this happened, my dad was also building a church. When the congregation found out about his accident, they came to the hospital and encircled him in the hospital room.  They encircled him in prayer. My mother has told me about this experience many times since this happened. It never fails to make an impression on me every time I hear it. I believe that there was healing in their prayers.

Even if one does not believe in God, prayer is possible because prayer is loving intention.  The power of prayer is the power of love. That’s it. And any one of us can do it at any time we wish to do so.  To me, that makes it a miracle too.

I was reminded today, that I am getting old.   Or, in particular, my body is not what it used to be.  My husband and I took a hike in a State Park on our third honeymoon, so to speak.  We went hiking on our honeymoon and our 20th Anniversary.  And today, after 45 years we hiked a trail that was considered “rugged.”  I had misgivings about this trek, as I have had a surgical procedure on 3 toes that required hammertoe surgery 7 years ago.  Well, we made it to the part where we were to go across a stream by hopping rocks across the creek with the water moving by.  Needless to say, we turned back to the beginning of the trail.

I’m not in horrible shape for 67, even considering the surgical procedure, but could definitely feel the difference at my age.  I am now “old chick” as my husband is fond of calling me.

But beyond all these changes, I don’t consider myself feeble.  I exercise.  I just feel aches and pains that I never felt before.  I have fallen on my knee, on concrete mostly, enough times to have developed arthritis in it.  My mother, at 92, prays for me everyday that I won’t fall.  I fall, a lot.  But, I didn’t fall today.

There was a hopscotch court outside of a recreation building, that my husband and I could simply not do well.  I hate to admit it, but I just can’t hop anymore without it killing my joints.  It’s hard to accept, but my body is becoming a great disappointment.

I must also admit, that it really doesn’t bother me that much.  I just have to deal with aches and pains now.  What would bother me more, would to be a pain to others.  I don’t mind being older.  It’s a gift to be married for 45 years, able to see my grandchildren grow up, and spend time with my mother.  These facts of my life are privileges denied to many people.  And aches and pains are not too high a cost for me to have these blessings in my life.