In my three years of grieving the loss of our son, I have learned that the clichés, the usual ones about time healing or life being bitter/sweet that are of such great help to those who want to console me, are of little value to me. In the most pleasant of terms, I have learned to ignore them.
After three years of mourning, my grief comes in waves and sometimes in spots. It is always there under the surface, an assumed tone and a slight tension in my throat. My throat will catch at surprising themes and triggers. In this, I am like many I know. A friend, another suicide survivor, will share with me poems that led him to weep. “I don’t know why,” he’ll say, “but this one left me inconsolable. It’s not even remotely about losing my daughter. Maybe it’s just the theme of fatherhood. That’s what I see in it. I don’t know.”
It’s that “I don’t know” part that I value, the part that is found in the life of grief–not knowing, so unlike the certainty of our clichés.
As my friend has found with poetry, there are songs that lead me to weep. Just cuing them up to play causes a catch in my throat. When I really think about them, I wonder why. I don’t know what is in them beyond someone’s sadness or depression that I recognize. Most would not weep to them the way that I do. This reminds me that after my mother died, my father would listen to a particular performance of the Beethoven violin concerto, and it would lead him to weep. It would be deeply moving to him. He needed it.
Driving on the freeway this week for the first time in a month or two has also triggered sadness, memories. These will always be peculiar to me and my loss–the driving away on that same stretch of the 210 that morning and then hurrying back to find my son dead. No cliché, no song could measure this. It is my peculiar story.
But this is how I do it and how some fathers face the loss of their children. There is this constant throatiness, and there is no consolation or reasonable answer for the insanity that has occurred, only the awareness of the suffering of people.
This is my response to this month of October, the third October after our loss. Three years ago, on the 28th of October, we held my son’s memorial service. It was the last time our community mourned with us. I don’t expect that any more. I alone am aware that it has now been three years.
And I know that the world, beautiful as it is, is also full of suffering. I don’t know what lies ahead, but I will try to be there for others.
The triggers of grief are sometimes odd and often unexpected. All one can do is acknowledge the emotion and ride the wave. ❤️ Loving you all ❤️
Jeanine, yes, well said. They are odd and unexpected.
Thanks.
Tom – I have also been on emotional memory waves through this terrible period of isolation. Those lost to us (sometimes LONG ago) seem to be resurfacing in haunting ways. Love lingers forever! It is a blessing along with the sadness.
Heidi, well said! This isolation period has caused us all to fall back on our memory waves that circle around the same triggers. It is a blessing–I would not trade them just because of the sadness. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing this, Tom. Grief has no timeline.
Thank you for reading, Nancy. I agree. I think the process can be different each time we go through it.
Writers use words not to express the inexpressible nor to give it a local habitation and a name but rather to touch the silence and feel that it is there.
Thanks, Tom. You help.
Thank you for your comments, David. These are the things we need to talk about, or at least, hear.