If you’ve ever spent time in the ocean, trying to tread water in strong waves, you understand the analogy of how it feels to move through life with the reminder of grief and the cruelty of depression.

To be clear, grief and depression are not the same thing. Grief is the constant reminder of a loss you carry, where for me, depression is the feeling I carry of not being able to solve it or fix it or even prevent it (another loss) from happening again.

I watched the angry waves hit the rocky shore ruthlessly, smoothing their surface to a polished, slick edge. The hidden rip current beneath the surface a stronger force than the breaking waves upon the shore.

I was reminded of a time on my anniversary trip to Maui with my husband when we went snorkeling everywhere we went. I loved the world just out of sight of ours, so colorful and magical. On one of our trips we went off the lava rock shore to find an area that promised diverse fish not far out in the small bay. We had been snorkeling all week so my husband went first and swam out to the point in front of me. Eager to join him I quickly put my fin on one foot and rushed to throw my other on when my bare foot slid across the sharp lave rock. It sliced the side of my foot like butter. Ignoring it I put on my mask and jumped in. As soon as I swam a few yards, I was reminded that I was not an olympic swimmer or a decent swimmer. I could swim, ish, I mean I could swim a pool and tread water. Swimming against the waves was more difficult in this rocky bay. I was trying to catch up to my husband and in my rush my mask was filling with water. I was unable to see clearly. Instantly I became aware that my foot was in a lot of pain and it was now stinging in the salt water and definitely not helping me tread water while I adjusted my mask. The large waves kept smacking me in the face as I tried to put my mask back on and I took in water. For a brief moment, I felt the fear that I could drown only a few yards from my husband, and panic started to sink in. He was completely unaware of my difficulties. I somehow managed to ignore the pain in my foot and fix my mask enough to bee-line to him.

Staring at the Oregon shore I felt a similar feeling to that day in Maui. The pain of my daughter’s death like the sliced foot as I try and swim, the constant angry waves are the waves of forces beyond my control that keep hitting me in the face. Another daughter with depression, the loss of direction with my career, finances, college tuition, Covid, my mother’s cancer, just daily over and over without any reprieve.

I am not alone in my situation. Unfortunately, genetics can often be at the center of this tragic play and grief the script. Many families know this feeling of helplessness, losing a loved one to depression and maybe having it themselves or having another family member with it as well. Major depression is genetic and messy. Affecting more than one family member most times and sometimes the underlying cause of a loss. It often times is tangled up with addiction, poor decision making, and complicated relationships. Then the loss in the family leaves no stone left unturned, no person left unaffected. It bulldozes every person in the family leaving them unable to help their other surviving family members. Each person trying to tread water injured in a sea of grief.

As difficult as it is, we cannot do it alone. It’s easier emotionally to swim with others that our in our own pool, so to speak, (understand our situation) but we also have to find support outside our own pool and for me at least that changes through the seasons of grief. I have come to realize I cannot support everyone in my family, keeping them afloat myself. I have to rely on others and I have to encourage my family to take support themselves. Currently my support comes in the form of a few friends. They drag me out to walk, they listen as I talk and they do not see me as the shell of myself that I feel that I am. For my other daughters I encourage them to reach out and find their own support groups and people that can give them good counsel. The truth is I dread reaching out to these support groups myself, I feel broken vulnerable and weak but talking and working with others is the only way to make progress forward or at least not sink. Every day I have to try again, I have to keep swimming as Dori said. These words just came into my head, so I share them with you. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:9). It’s ok to be weak and sharing our weakness with others makes us stronger even if we can’t see it through our salt water filled goggles.

As a child and through young adulthood I’ve never knew what to say when I was lavished with gifts out of the norm, I would feel awkward, somehow underserving and it made me uncomfortable. That is how I felt with sympathy somehow. It makes me feel like I need to say something in return, it makes me uncomfortable for the person offering it and it makes me feel like I need to make the person who is offering their sympathy feel better. I remember saying “It’s ok” to multiple people at the funeral and hugging people more for them than myself. Since then I’ve become some sort of a grief advocate. I say my daughter’s name when something relevant comes up, just as I would if she was alive. I don’t care if I make others “uncomfortable” life and death are uncomfortable.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my daughter’s death, the anniversary of loosing a piece of myself, loosing part of my family, and the anniversary of this day changing the trajectory of each of her sisters and her parents, family and friends forever. I took the day off of work. I decided to be open about the date. It is my daughter’s Angel date as I call it. Where I believe her to be in a better place, and I have no concern to debate it with anyone who feels otherwise. I know it makes my managers feel uncomfortable to hear me say multiple times, as I was asked if I was working that day multiple times, “it is the anniversary of my daughter’s death, I will not be there”.

At some point, at first for my other daughter’s and then for myself, I decided I was not going to let grief consume me. It easily could have. The most important lesson I have learned is that it NEVER goes away. There are moments it overwhelms me, and I feel it, observe it and I let it pass. I think setting aside a day for grief is a novel concept. On her birthday I celebrate her, her ideals, the non-profit in her name, he life and beauty. On holidays I remember her. But on this day I grieve her loss and I encourage my daughters to take the day off from responsibilities for that time.

I believe it gives grief a place to reside. A day or a place. A time to light a candle, plant a tree or bulbs, read a favorite book, go on a quiet walk, or as my family as adopted, spreading rose petals either at a place she loved or someplace she would have loved to see.

I recently read some poetry by Caitlyn Siehl, and these words stood out to me, “Do not fall in love with people like me.
I will take you to museums, and parks, and monuments, and kiss you in every beautiful place, so that you can never go back to them without tasting me like blood in your mouth.
I will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible. And when I leave you will finally understand, why storms are named after people.” To me that describes loss.

It made me then wonder why storms were names after people, the words that hit home with a little internet search were these, “Meteorologists long ago learned that naming tropical storms helps us remember, communicate about them more effectively, and so to stay safer” earthsky.org

Why would grief then be so different? It is a hurricane that threatens to level your life, it deserves to be acknowledged, to be named for the damage and chaos it brought to your life. I think about Katrina. I visited NewOrleans a year after I lost my daughter. I didn’t know the words then, but I recognize the sisterhood I felt with the city. It was a city rebuilding, a city that was loved and still loved, it was a city that would never be the same, but it does not hide in shame of its destruction. It rebuilds, scarred, determined, beautiful but never the same.

Pitiest: (archaic) Second-person singular simple present form of pity. https://www.yourdictionary.com/

The other day I was driving home, thinking about how we are given more signs it seems right after our loved one pass, but as the time goes on, you seem to be given less and less. It make sense, when you first lose a child or a spouse or a parent you cannot even believe it is your new reality. Honestly if I hear “new normal” one more time I might gag.

I have been contemplating my career during these Covid times, I decided I wanted to go back to school to get my Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner degree a few months ago, and I have been wading through the grueling admission process and trying to talk my husband into believing it’s a good idea, (not a goal I have achieved yet), ever since. Since I was taken out of the role of Charge nurse or Head nurse for putting in missed breaks all at one time for a year, when I learned from my union a break isn’t a break if you are eating your lunch on the toilet with the desk phone, I have been re-evaluating my career life choices.

For eight years I was used to the chaos of the role, and I found myself looking to find my new work identity. Lately, I found myself really disliking my limited time with patients and limited interactions with other employees since now I was in the operating room every day with my patient asleep for the most part. The only communication you have with your patients awake, is about five minutes of their time before surgery and about five minutes after they have opened their eyes as a surgical nurse. Not to say the job isn’t interesting or important, (but to be honest, there are days it doesn’t feel either).

There are some days your five minutes are cut even shorter, like when your nurse checking in the patient hasn’t had a chance to check the patient in earlier, so as a surgical nurse you might listen in, ask three to five questions and leave getting a report from the other nurse when he/she is finished.

I was having one of those days. We were moving ahead of schedule, faster than the check in process could keep up. I popped my head in to see if I could introduce myself and the other nurse let me jump in. I asked my few safety questions and before I was about to leave and looked down at her hand and saw a large glass ring.

The ring was very unusual, it looked like blown glass, colorful and smooth, slightly large for a ring. Besides her hospital gown, that was all she was wearing. I said, “Oh, I see you still have a ring on.” She said, “the ring is very important to me, I never take it off.” I noticed it was glass, so I wasn’t worried about it being metal and interfering with anything. I said, “well your hand can swell during surgery and I also would hate for it to get lost.” I looked at her face and she had tears in her eyes that were about to spill over. It is not uncommon for patients to be anxious before surgery, but this patient had not showed any signs of anxiety earlier, she had no history of mental health issues listed or that were reported to me. I waited a few heartbeats for her to explain.

She said, “this ring was my twin sister’s ring. My identical twin sister. She died, and you see I never take it off because I feel like I am bringing her with me”. I immediately felt a lump in my throat form and I quickly said, “your surgery is only twenty minutes long, and we are working nowhere near your hand, we can tape your ring, so it doesn’t move or fall off.” Most people that know me at work, know I am a stickler for the rules, there are exceptions, of course, but I like to follow them and I am constantly trying to keep up with the policies as they ebb and flow.

She was so grateful, the tears now threatening to fall. She said without prodding, and to be honest I felt the words coming before they tumbled out of her mouth, “it was suicide.”I was thankful no one was standing near me, I felt my own eyes well up. I held her hand with the ring. “I lost my own daughter,” I said, “the same way.” She looked into my eyes and felt the common bond between us that no words can describe. I reached over with her other hand to hold mine. She told me how losing her twin had been like loosing half of herself as she imagined losing a child might be. She then asked me if I knew any good grief therapists. She was still struggling she said. Again somehow knowing she lived near me, I asked, “what city do you live in?” and she answered a city near mine. I told her I was going to get her room ready but I would give her some information about local groups. Before I ran off, she told me how we were meant to meet.

In the operating room I heard the surgeon mention to his resident how our patient had gone through the tragedy of her sisters suicide. I wondered how this one surgeon didn’t know my story, I had thought they all did. As the years go on though, I realize people forget, and new surgeons come and people tend to say things at work or in life around me now they don’t realize still makes me internally cringe. It seems so often people say things like, “I would ki** myself if that happened to me, or just sh**t me in the head why don’t you.” These dumb idioms or whatever they are, make the minority of us grief-walkers just wring our hands and clench our jaw while walking away.

After surgery, I usually only have a couple minutes to report off to the recovery nurse and go see my next patient. This just happened to be my last case of the day and we were done early. I stood next to her ask she became fully awake. I told her everything went well and I had put the info for her in her bag. I noticed her ring was off and I asked, “where is your ring?” I had a moment of panic as I looked down at her blankets. She said, “it was uncomfortable taped and I didn’t want to lose it, besides I know my sister was with me because of you and I think my sister and your daughter brought us together.” For the second time that day, I felt a lump in my throat. She talked a little more to me, and at one point I asked her what year her sister passed. Again somehow I knew we would have another common bond as she said 2018. I agreed with her as I told her to take care while , I was meant to be her nurse today. It doesn’t matter if I am head nurse or not, maybe we are used where we are at in life, and though I hope to have a different path in my career in the future, hopefully as a PMHNP, for now I am ok where I am at.

Will there be joy again? It was a question I asked myself as I watched my oldest daughter graduate from college six months after the death of her sister. I took stock of my emotions, I was “happy” for her, I was proud of her, but it came with ache I would never see my daughter Mikenna graduate from university. The last two Holidays came and went and I felt the same emotions, I was thankful to be with my family and sad that part of it will forever be missing. I came up with ways to endure Holidays and special occasions, I created new traditions and I made sure to make plans on days that I new would be hard. But where was JOY?

I remember just months after I lost my daughter one of my doctor friends asked if we could all go out, to cheer me up. My old group of work friends kept asking me for dates and times to go. It sounded horrible. It sounded like a lot of me trying to act like I was fine. The truth was I am a social creature, but being around a lot of people, at least during the first couple years drained me. I knew at the time I was asked that someday that invitation might sound nice, but at that time It was the last thing I wanted to do. Two and a half years went by and now I might like the occasional invite, though many of the invites have stopped coming. Then the world went into a pandemic. How rude!

It made me realize that we do move away from people that seem like drama, they have something always going on or they might be emotional, it’s our natural instinct to move away from them. How often before my daughter passed did I not call or text someone because I felt uncomfortable with what they had going on in their life? It’s funny how life experiences change your perspective. At one point in my life, I learned to avoid people that might drag me into any unhealthy relationships, but as I matured I learned that you can also have healthy boundaries with your friends and their drama. Most people have messy lives, and you can still have relationships without taking on everyone’s issues.

My core people are still around me, some live far or I only see them once in awhile, but the main people that supported me at work, at home or online are still around. They still ask me to get coffee, have a bonfire, go for a walk, or send a text here and there, even if I don’t take them up on it. That’s what you find when you go through something terrible, you find your people. I am luckier than most people I know online dealing with loss, I have a larger support group than most, even two years later, they still send a message here and there to make sure I have left my house beyond work once in awhile. If you are reading this, and you know someone like me or my family, keep reaching out. It might seem like it’s been a very long time and we should be “back to normal” but we aren’t, our social energy as I call it, has changed. We don’t think about calling or texting most days but we still need you in our lives! To us two years or four years seems like five minutes ago and we get lost as days float by without even knowing it.

The question still hung over my head? Will I ever feel pure JOY again? Have I felt any joy since the tragedy? I replayed the last couple of years in my mind. Maybe I had to redefine what Joy would be. A year after the tragedy I was given tickets for my oldest daughter and I to go to a comedy show. I felt so awkward going out. It was like I forgot how to be in public. Once the show started though, I found myself laughing hysterically I would consider that joy. Another time that comes to mind is the trip I took to Ireland with my oldest daughter for a graduation present. We still shed many tears knowing that we were in a place her sister would have loved, but we had moments of joy as we took castle crypt tours, tromped through farming fields to view the cliffs and visited local pubs in every town we came across.

Then last month I was invited to a 50th birthday party with just a few people I already carpool with to work. I wasn’t sure why they wanted a “kill joy” with them, but I decided to go. Only two very strong cocktails was all I needed to be ready for bed, but we were at the coast so I kept myself from dozing off. My friend was laying on the rocks and watching the meteor shower, so I joined her. Looking up and seeing the stars so clear was amazing and I would say, that was contentment. For whatever reason, that moment was void of anything but looking up at the shooting stars.

Two days ago, one of my closest friends asked if I wanted to make dinner with her and double the recipe, to be honest I almost bailed, but I ended up going anyway. We cooked and had a glass of wine and talked about both of our own trips to Ireland. I was there for just a couple of hours but it was enjoyable to laugh and be with someone I am comfortable with. Besides my “people” one of my other loves in my life are my kitties. It might be because my daughter that passed also loved them. I was never an animal person when I was younger, but now when my little fluff ball curls up in my lap, (Tonks who is supposed to be a warrior kitty), it makes my heart feel like it is getting a little hug. What I am realizing, is that I didn’t have a ton of experiences over the last couple years of pure JOY, but I did have them. I am redefining my definition of Joy.

For me, I am finding joy in laughter. In those moments you are laughing you are not focused on anything else. I also find my joy in discovery and travel. (Now if we weren’t in a pandemic that would be nice!) I find joy in effortless friendship, where I can be myself, where we can cook, craft, travel, play games or laugh. I find joy in the unconditional love of animals, the way my Puggle follows me everywhere and sleeps practically on top of me. If you have had tragedy, loss, or trauma, you will not experience happiness and joy the same way you had before, for instance I will never have all my girls here on Christmas morning and that kind of joy is now a fond memory unable to be had again. Find the little things that give you even a moment of contentment, no matter what it is. Identify these things so that you can redefine your JOY and put a little bit of it back into your life.

I had seen the waterfall a half dozen times, but walking towards it on the narrow path that circled behind the waterfall always gave me a sense of anticipation.  As I grew closer to it I would begin to feel the slide of the mud under my feet, the mist of the spray hitting my face even yards away.   The air slightly cooler from the shelter of the rock overhang and the cliff walls almost icy to my palms as I would walk under, the loud roar of the vertical river flowing above my head.   For just a moment, the beautiful imagery is slightly magical, surreal, and I can experience a feeling of escapism from the weight of the world as I know it.

As I round the corner and start to pass the lower pools I would still feel the remnants of fairyland as if I just missed the magical creatures sunning themselves amongst the moss and rainbows made by the lower falls and sunlight.    Starting the long climb up the hill to leave the falls it occurred to me the metaphor the falls was showing me.   See its always harder to walk away from something then it is to walk towards something.

I was thinking about the death of my daughter at first.   It has been two years.  Moving forward for the longest time felt like walking away from her and was impossible.  My friend and who had walked my same path years earlier told me that for awhile we walk with one foot in this world and one foot in the spirit world, and it sounds crazy but it’s true.  It’s why I believe we get the most signs from our loved ones in the first years and I think it’s also a way of being spirtual comforted.  It’s like the world is just to harsh in full focus and we walk around with everything slightly blurred.  In a way its some sort of protective mechanism.  I remember my friend saying I needed to be grounded (like with meditation) I told her I was content with my mind somewhere else honestly, staring at clouds and watching for heart rocks every place I walked.  In this metaphor I was stuck, and in someways will always be stuck, with the unique mysterious waterfall directly behind me and the hill out of the valley in front of me.

I’ve recently found myself with Covid-19 unknowns and my work environment to be in a comparable metaphor.  Years ago we worked in a small environment, we had our struggles but we were a family.  I was one of a few leaders that advocated for staff in a mama bear like fashion, and also had the ability to communicate to staff the direction of our higher-ups.  We had potlucks when someone got married or had a baby, we mourned when someone lost a family member.   We became a larger unit, we were in the labor pains of growth and then Covid hit.  My voice became misinterpreted, schedules and patient loads has become uncertain, the work/family dynamic has been undone.  I found myself looking back at what we had filled with sadness.

As I faced uncertainty with work, I contemplated the waterfall metaphor.  It Is much easier to walk towards something than to walk away from something.   The family atmosphere will always be a part of us, at least with the staff still remaining and even those that have moved on.  We carry it with us.   It is in our work ethic.  It is in our compassion.  What I needed to focus on was not walking away but I needed a horizon to focus on, something to move towards.   I needed something that during these uncertain times, my focus could be not on the daily changes, but on something else.  I decided to start taking classes towards an advanced degree.  As the seasickness of uncertainty in my work environment continues, working towards an MSN could adjust my focus, and give me something to move towards.

People give advice about moving on and letting go.  The truth is, the process is different for everyone and no one that hasn’t experienced the same type of loss, should ever give advice about it.  The truth is, you don’t EVER let go of your child or loved one, you figure out how to carry them with you as you try and move forward.  It makes me think of Jesus carrying the cross.  As a parent that has lost a child, I carry my daughter Mikenna with me always in everything I do now.  Sometimes it is a heavy load and though you cannot carry my grief for me, you can always help with a metaphorical hand when you see me or someone like me struggling with the weight of it.

Just like the waterfall, I carry all the sounds, the sights, the smells with me climbing the hill of the rest of my life.   I wish I could tell you that I could go back somehow to before my life was changed forever with one phone call.  As I write this blog the image stands out like it was moments ago.   I stood in an operating room changing room.  I had just started to give a dinner break to another nurse in a Cleft Palate surgery for an infant with a mission team called F.A.C.E.S. The words Mikenna died from my husband, my own alien sounding wail.   She had told me she was proud of me.  I would be never again be able to work in Peru and it would take months to be able to work through the PTSD of the operating room and longer still for that kind of surgery without mild panic attacks.

As I stood momentarily in my perfect world, that was like my amazing waterfall, a life with her in it.  For almost two years I stood just on the other side, unable to move at all, back or forward.

I know it will be at the end of this life and into the next that I experience and hold my daughter again.  I  move forward, up the hill, one step at a time now carrying that life and her with me, not letting it or her go.   Some people may not ever know what it feels like to have to move away from such a gift.  They can’t imagine it and that’s ok. (I wouldn’t ever want anyone I know or care about to be able to).  So I move forward with it in my heart, walking through the uncertainty of life knowing that it will be a lifetime but I can keep that knowledge as my horizon,  my focal point to keep me steady, what I walk towards instead of what I walk away from.  The moment someday, 20, 30, 40 years from now that I hold my child again.  But I move.

 

 

Have you ever seen an image and had it resonate with you?  Like the metaphor or similarities were created only for you, at the moment you were to see it,  the poetic imagery that would then stir the emotions inside you?

That is how I felt when I viewed the few hundred year old tree from the side of the enormous root system protruding out of the ground on my casual hike through the nature preserve.   I couldn’t use words to describe the bizarre kinship I felt, but I snapped a quick cell phone image and kept moving while I considered it.

The giant pine was grounded well in thick nutrient rich soil, the base of the tree almost six feet in width, and my sixth grade outdoor school guesstimate had taught me a lot of rings, means the tree lived a lot of years.  I wondered how did a massive tree become uprooted?  A lightning storm, disease, flooding, old age?  I could only imagine that it came unexpectedly.  Something so strong and deeply rooted, overturned possible in a flash of lightning.    I couldn’t help but feel like nature had created visual imagery of the way I felt on the inside.

The truth is, there is no putting it back.   There is no undoing what has happened. The tree is left to create a new story, even if the new story is not part of the original plan.  I wonder about how often, or rather rarely, the plans we make actually go as we have scripted.  Life is messy, and one of the only things we can bank on to happen is change.

I wonder when I started to tell myself the false narrative that I could have a perfect life if I followed all the rules.   I taught my children all the things, I was a good example, I was a part of our community and participated in every school function.  When do we start telling ourselves that lie?  Watching Disney movies?  When do we fool ourselves into believing tragedies only happen if you do something wrong?  That they will not happen to us if we pray enough or believe enough?   We believe the lie that we must be flawed as a person or a parent if tragedy befalls us.

Almost to further prove my point, the next day at work I found that Covid had broke the happiest person on Earth.  I work with a nurse who I have see smile and blow off the worse of the intolerant patient, surgeon, and most terrible work situation.  She ends each day asking if there is anything she can do to help you before she leaves and insists you have a wonderful night or weekend.  She starts off every morning with Gooood morning in a sing song type voice, way before my coffee has set in.  She asks if you need a hug anytime she sees you looking down.   You would think that would be how all nurses are, but honestly I can assure you that this is a rare find, at least in the operating room.

More popular is the mixture between sarcasm and 7th grade locker room humor to get through the days of extreme stress, though our underlying commitment to our patients is always first and foremost.  On this day though she quietly asked to go home.  I asked if she was sick and she said she couldn’t quit having moments of being tearful.  It was like someone broke Disneyland, the happiest (nurse) place on earth.   With all the social distancing she found herself alone day in and day out.  She couldn’t give hugs or receive them and all the news with death and sadness had left her feeling distraught.  We talked about the fact that taking a moment to cry or tear up is ok.  It’s become my new normal.  It’s ok to take a moment to splash water on your face between patients, it’s ok to take a moment and dab your eyes.   We are human and having emotions is in our nature.   I also gave her a much needed hug, a very long much needed hug.  I consider it a nursing treatment.  We talked about things she could do at home, maybe a kitty, more communication through FaceTime or another platform.  She was having trouble living through her new normal, one that had been thrown at her without warning.  It was obviously not the same as losing a child, but it was a feeling I could relate to and it broke my heart to see someone so full of joy, broken.

As if nature was following up with a second act, I ran across another unusual tree on my next hike on my daughter’s birthday.   The tree I ran across grew parallel to the ground.  It looked like it had seen many years and was covered in thirty or more very large knots. Knots are imperfections from stress, the changes in it’s environment and also what makes this tree so beautiful.  The stress causes weakness in the structure of the tree.  This tree had nothing but knots from the trunk up at least three fourths of the way and then two branches, that grew straight out of the knotted tree as if they were coming out of the ground itself..   There was beauty in the imperfectness, the deep lines, the dark rich color that was created over many years the drastic difference in the angle of the tree and its remaining branches.  I was having another moment of comparing similarities as I examined the way the tree survived in an unusual manor each stress to its core.  The irony of my two youngest (sapling) survivors standing next to it was not lost on me.