Tiny Buddha

Tag: mourn

  • The Chaos of Life After Loss and the Love That Never Dies

    The Chaos of Life After Loss and the Love That Never Dies

    “We need to grieve the ones we’ve lost—not to sustain our connection to suffering, but to sustain our connection to love.” ~Jennifer Williamson

    Ken was only forty-seven years old when he met his untimely death.

    It was surreal, my brother-in-law was gone from our physical world.

    As a family, we felt the motions moving through the initial telephone call summoning us to the hospital to the time we surrounded him as he took his last breath. It was if we were all caught between two worlds, one of cruel reality and one of complete disbelief. You read about it happening to other people, not to us.

    My chest felt like a dense, cold stone had been dropped abruptly on it aimed at my heart after hearing those words hit my ears: “He’s not going to make it…”

    When it’s your family lying in the wake of such a painful experience, you soon realize the profound effect that death has. It causes an enormous ripple in all our lives that reaches out for miles, days, weeks, and years.

    It’s such a deep wound for an entire community that surrounded him—his young family left behind, extended family at work, concert traveling buddies, camping friends, and countless other people who enjoyed his presence.

    Ken embraced fun, passion, and laughter, whether he was tearing up the dance floor, creating his culinary signature dishes for our family gatherings, harvesting his perfect tomatoes, or taking pictures of his lovely wife, kids, and all their adventures with his “fancy camera”. Ken was such an amazing soul that brought light wherever he shone.

    A fall down a set of stairs changed our world completely. Ken suffered multiple bruises on the front and back of his brain as well as a significant fracture to the base of his skull. Black circles surrounded his eyes that look liked two large shiners. Contusions littered his arms and head.

    The next week was steady but slow progress. His alertness grew and conscious awareness slowly trickled back. A conversation with the physician’s assistant was frank. Despite the best-case scenario, it would be a long recovery.

    Questions loomed in the back of our minds. If he recovers, will our Ken ever be whole again? What challenges will this new version of himself present for our family?

    It was clear that Ken would more than likely suffer from cognitive behavior issues associated with a traumatic brain injury. While in the hospital, some of his behavior was unusual but typical of a patient with his condition and prognosis. Initially, he had to be restrained to ensure he wouldn’t pull out his vital monitors or attempt to leave the hospital.

    Eventually, he became calmer and more stable. A couple of days before he died was the last time my husband and I saw him smile and laugh again. A little of Ken was still in there, and it gave us hope.

    We soon learned that brain injuries are unpredictable. Twelve days in and without warning, Ken suffered a massive stroke. The night before, he sat and watched the Jets hockey game with his son and wife. The next morning changed everything.

    The nurse found him unresponsive. The doctors advised us that they would have to place Ken into a medically induced coma for three days.

    The next morning our immediate family was summoned to the ICU. For reasons unknown, the pressure on his brain suddenly escalated. Medical intervention could not save him. Ken would have to be taken off life support. The doctors ensured us that he would pass peacefully.

    All our family rushed to be by his side for his last moments. That day was the toughest day of my life. I witnessed the life leave his body as his skin turned from a beigy pink hue to a flush of gray in an instant when death gently urged life to leave him. We said goodbye to Ken as he took his last breath on this earth.

    The hospital was a stark reminder of the gravity of our situation. Patients and families in intensive care. The noises of the machines and sight of numerous tubes. The nurses and doctors. Conversations and updates. Decisions. Sandpaper Kleenex from the waiting room. The beeps and syringes. It was so much to soak in with your eyes and ears.

    The hospital is not a pleasant and serene place to die. It was out of medical necessity. For his children’s sake, it was a bitter lesson of mortality. There was no real goodbye. Memories of their father motionless, tubes parading from his body surrounded by an army of machines. My heart sank for them. It was their dad’s final moment of life, and unfortunately death doesn’t let us choose our departure.

    The next day after he had passed, we gathered at my mother-in-law’s house. A service needed to be planned. Food was ordered, notice in the paper submitted, cremation arrangements and so many other details were handled in a few short hours. A celebration of life at the local community center, where my husband’s family grew up.

    Simple and incredibly warm would be his final goodbye to everyone. It told a story of his passionate essence that was his life. There was an incredible outpouring of support by those that attended and were touched by Ken’s being.

    A collection of Ken’s favorite things and pictures of precious moments throughout his life was on display. His fishing rod, lures made from his daughter’s nail polish, guitar, sport jerseys, and the leg lamp Christmas Story movie lights I gave him for his birthday, among other things, were included.

    Ken’s wife gave the eulogy (the only speech), and it was moving. He was the love of her life since she was eighteen years old, father of her children, and the guy that was supposed to be alongside her till they were both old and grey.

    Despite the sorrow, she spoke of the time they had and her gratitude for having found her soul mate. I was held back by the shimmer she refused to let go, despite the world she knew was crumbling all around her. I expected that the service would provide some closure, but despite the reality growing around his death, it made it harder to accept that he was really gone.

    The wave of responsibilities in the aftermath of death is overwhelming. It is astonishing the volume of family and friends that contacted my sister-in-law, his mother and father, my husband. It left little time to feel lonely let alone mourn. Constant phone calls, food deliveries, visits.

    My sister-in-law knew that it was an unavoidable truth to the whole situation. People mean well; it’s the process that follows that is daunting. Paperwork, death certificate, cremation, insurance, calling the kids’ schools, and all the little things tacked on create an enormous to-do list.

    You steadily move without pausing and push through during the most profoundly impacting moment of your life. I’m still amazed at how well she pulled it all together. I knew in my heart she wanted to just collapse once all of this chaos settled. Once the mayhem calmed, the mounting grief would follow in its footsteps.

    I watched my family fall apart and try to make sense of it all. The cruelty of holding onto the idea of someone that once was. Hope heartlessly taken abruptly away from us.

    It wasn’t just his death alone; it was the rollercoaster of preceding events in the hospital that would damage us. Desperately holding onto the side of a boat without paddles, helplessly letting the river take us down its path etched into the earth. It is futile to stop it, you have to let it to carry you along its rough waters till they are calm once again. Like the river, living is really just control relinquished. It was never our duty to try and harness it.

    The heavy gravity of loss and pain we all felt was slightly dissipated as we reminisced about Ken. Our faces would be painted with smiles amid a round of laughter as we fondly remembered his antics and told stories amongst ourselves.

    We would be delicately reminded of how much we love him and his incredible passion for living. Death may take our physical being, but his memory and energy will live on within each of us.

    Grief and love are so intimately intertwined. Without grieving we would never know love so deeply. It’s the beauty of love and sorrow twirling around us in this constant dance we call life. I realized that our hearts are meant to be broken only to be reborn and rise time and time again.

  • 4 Powerful Lessons I’ve Learned from Grief Since My Mom Died Suddenly

    4 Powerful Lessons I’ve Learned from Grief Since My Mom Died Suddenly

    “Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.” ~Mariska Hargitay

    At 6:07 pm on July 18, 2020, I was sitting on the couch with my boyfriend. It was a Saturday night, and I had canceled plans with my friends because I had a migraine. I had eaten dinner already, and I was in my pajamas, watching TV. My phone rang—my dad. “I’ll call him back later,” I said, flipping the phone over on the couch and returning my attention to the television.

    Three minutes later, I received a text from my dad to my sister and me.

    “Girls, I do not want to alarm you, but I am at the emergency room in Asheville. Your mother and I were riding our bikes, and she was hit by a car. An ambulance came very quickly, and they have her right now. I am doing some paperwork at the front desk, so I don’t know her condition. I will keep you posted. Love.”

    I read it to my boyfriend, concerned. I worried she had broken an arm or perhaps even a leg. My mother had never broken a bone before. I answered my father’s Facetime. I could see the hospital waiting room behind him. Crowded. I looked back at his face. My stomach tied itself into knots, and my migraine pounded.

    “God almighty, shit.” My dad’s refrain.

    I looked at my sister’s face. I stared at her, a tiny square on my phone. As my dad described what had happened, my eyes bore into my twin’s, as if I could make everything okay if I just looked at her hard enough.

    My dad told the story, occasionally stopping to speak to doctors or the hospital chaplain, Jim, who remained close by. That was the first sign to me that something was very wrong. All those people in the waiting room, and the chaplain was only speaking to Dad.

    I’ve heard this story thousands of times by now. I know every detail by heart. So I’ll tell it in my words, not his.

    Around 3:32 pm, Jane and John Beach left their cabin in Saluda, North Carolina, with their mountain bikes hitched to the back of their twenty-one-year-old Toyota Four Runner. They drove to Pisgah National Forest near Asheville, where they planned to go on a bike ride before stopping by their favorite brewery for dinner.

    At 5:21 pm, Jane and John were finishing their ride. They took a right on Brevard Road. John went first. And Jane followed.

    At 5:22 pm, twenty-five-year-old Hannah was driving down the road. If Jane had turned right seconds later, at 5:23 pm, Hannah would have sped right past. Instead, Jane was hit from behind by Hannah’s tan Buik Sentry.

    John heard the impact, skidded to halt, and threw his bike across the road. Sprinting to his wife, who was now lying in the street. Her bike was destroyed. Her helmet split in two. At the same moment, Hannah, with blood on her hood and a cracked windshield, drove away as quickly as she came.

    At Mission Hospital, Jane was intubated and treated with attention and care. At 7:18 pm, I learned over FaceTime that my mother had died. My father was crying.

    “God almighty, shit.”

    He continued to repeat.

    That day, the moment my mom died, I joined a community of hundreds of thousands of others who were grieving. If you’re reading this article, you’re probably part of my community, or maybe you love someone who is.

    During the months after my mother’s death, I would lie in bed at night and think about everyone I was connected to, everyone else who was lying in bed, unable to sleep because they were thinking of someone they loved and lost.

    Since then, I’ve learned a lot about grief through articles, books, podcasts, and speaking to other people who were going through similar experiences. I wanted to understand grief because I wanted to know how to recover from it. But what I learned along the way is that grief is not something you heal from. When you lose someone, you carry that around with you forever, and it becomes a part of you.

    Grief can actually mold itself into something beautiful that reminds you of your strength and your capacity to love and be loved so fiercely that it hurts.

    Dumbledore said it best when he said, “To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.”

    If we can learn how to live in harmony with grief, it can teach us so much and help us grow. Here are four powerful lessons I’ve learned from my grief.

    Lesson 1: Love yourself harder.

    After my mom died, I was a mess. Not only was I in physical pain, but I felt as if all of the mental health struggles I’ve wrestled with for most of my life (anxiety and hypochondria, to name a few) were bubbling back up to the surface and threatening a takeover.

    Grieving can bring up old wounds and make other emotions seem unbelievable overwhelming. That’s why self-love and self-compassion are essential to ease the suffering that comes with grief.

    Self-compassion isn’t an easy thing to learn, but a good way to begin is by making a list of things that comfort you and making time for those things. Put in an effort toward just showing yourself some love.

    Grief taught me the importance of nurturing myself. I like to take baths, curl up with a good book, and take long walks. I’ve found that these moments of stillness and calm help me get through the moments of chaos and sadness and fear and frustration.

    Lesson 2: Fully feel your emotions.

    Grief often stimulates an overwhelming range of different emotions. People who are grieving feel their emotions very strongly, whether it’s sadness, joy, fear, or relief. Even a year and a half after my mom’s death, my emotions still hit me like bricks, and sometimes I really don’t see them coming.

    It’s natural to try and avoid the more uncomfortable emotions, like anxiety or fear, but that just makes them stronger. Instead, try sitting with your emotion. Fully feel it, and allow it to exist without any avoidance.

    Mindfulness, or grounding yourself in the present moment, can really help when you find yourself pushing an emotion away because it’s too painful. Try sitting quietly in an empty room. Imagine your emotion sitting beside you. Remember, you are not your emotion. It doesn’t have to control you. You don’t have to push it away out of fear.

    Another thing that’s important to remember is this: it’s okay to feel things. It’s okay to feel sad or angry or frustrated. Don’t push away any feelings because you think they’re “wrong” or “not helpful.” When you’ve gone through the trauma of losing someone, all feelings are valid. Let emotions live freely and recognize that you’re going to have good days and bad days.

    Lesson 3: Rituals and reminders can be therapeutic.

    When my mom died, I struggled to think of her without feeling pain. I hid everything that reminded me of her and took down all of my photos. Remembering her felt like staring directly at the sun. But eventually, I started to take comfort in reminders. I wanted to talk about her and see her face.

    Now, I wear her wedding ring every day and think of her often when I look at it. I drink earl grey tea and remember the days we used to spend sipping hot drinks in the Barnes and Noble coffee shop. I wear her favorite sweatshirt and think about the day she got it when she wasn’t much older than I am now, and she was pregnant with me and my sister.

    Staying connected with your loved ones after they’re gone can be tremendously comforting. There are many rituals that can help you accomplish that feeling. Here are a few of my favorite ideas:

    • Read their favorite book
    • Sit in a spot they loved in the house
    • Talk to their childhood best friend and ask to hear stories about them
    • Look at old photos
    • Listen to the music they loved
    • Plant a tree or flowers in their memory
    • Donate to a charity your loved one supported

    Lesson 4: Find people who understand you.

    Talking to other women who have lost their moms in their twenties has been an essential part of my healing process. I’ve met so many strong women who have overcome loss and trauma and used their grief to become better versions of themselves.

    One of my most meaningful connections formed through an organization called The Dinner Party. A few weeks after my mom died, I signed up without thinking that I would really get anything out of it. A few weeks later, I got an email saying that I had a new “buddy”—a girl only a few years older than me who had lost her mom in a biking accident just one month before I lost mine. A year and a half later, we still facetime regularly and are a big part of each other’s lives.

    Talking to someone who shares such a huge life experience with you is a relief, and it feels great to be able to express your full range of emotions to someone who understands because they are feeling all of those things too. From how to support our newly single dads to how to bring up your dead mom to a new friend, we’ve talked through so many things that are meaningful and important to me. We’re close friends, and she has been a great joy to come out of this difficult tragedy.

    Losing my mom has undoubtedly been the most difficult experience of my life, but I’ve learned to love my grief throughout my journey. It has made me stronger and more compassionate, and I know myself and my purpose better now than I ever would have without my grief. I would trade it all to have my mom back, but I know she would be proud of me if she were here right now.

  • Why I Blamed Myself for My Ex’s Suicide (and Why It’s Not My Fault)

    Why I Blamed Myself for My Ex’s Suicide (and Why It’s Not My Fault)

    “No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.” ~Umar Ibn Al Khattab

    I don’t remember the exact day the message came through. It was from my son, Julian, and he needed to talk to me. It sounded pretty serious. He never really needs to talk to me.

    His father was found dead earlier that week. He’d hung himself.

    While this news hardly affected Julian at all, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I cried.

    Our Marriage

    We met in a taxi thirty-three years ago. He was the driver, I was a drunk passenger. He was super handsome and flirty. He brought me home, and we exchanged numbers and instantly began a relationship.

    Within six months of dating, I found out I was pregnant. Since I didn’t want to be an unwed mother, we were married within a month and began our lives. We both had good jobs. I worked at a bank, he was an HVAC technician. Life was pretty good in the beginning.

    Then his job took us to a different city. We moved and for the first time in my life, I was alone with no friends and no family. I was twenty-six years old. Our marriage was okay, and we got along well.

    About six months after we moved to this new city, he started coming home later and later from work, some nights not until 2am. He always told me he had to work late. I believed him. He was on call a lot. I was home alone a lot.

    A few months later I made the decision to return to our hometown. He was to find a job there, which wouldn’t be hard. I didn’t want to be alone in this big city anymore, and I was just about to give birth. I wanted my family around.

    Life After Our Move

    We stayed at my parents’ house when we returned, and within a month had found our own apartment.

    He found a job almost instantly, and I delivered Julian two days after we got home. Life was going well.

    About a year into our lives with the baby, things started to get bad. He was out “working late” an awful lot. He would come home around two or three in the morning, smelling of alcohol. By the time Julian was eighteen months I had had enough and asked him to leave. This wasn’t the life I wanted for my son.

    He moved out and for the next six months, my life was a living hell. He would come over drunk at night, force sex on me, threaten to take my baby away from me, threaten to kill us both. He threatened me almost daily. Many nights I’d stay at a friend’s house just to feel safe. Many times the police were called.

    He finally moved out of province, and it was years before we heard from him again.

    The Divorce Agreement

    The day had come to file for divorce and put this whole marriage nightmare behind me. I filed for sole custody with no visitation allowed to him. He was unstable, dangerous, and violent, and I was not taking any chances with my son. The fact that he lived far enough away was my saving grace.

    Also stated in the divorce agreement was no child support payments. I wanted to completely cut all ties with this man. So I did just that.

    Twelve Years Later

    It may have been longer, maybe thirteen or fourteen years later, we received a package from him via his brother. It was sent to Julian. A picture of himself and a silver chain with a St. Christopher pendant.

    It meant nothing to Julian. He didn’t even know who this person was. I questioned his gesture. Was he trying to make amends? Was he trying to prove that maybe he’d changed and he wanted to start a relationship with his son?

    I never got the answer to any of those questions. He never reached out again after that.

    When my son moved away to university, he lived only a couple of hours away from his father. He made an attempt through his uncle to maybe meet up with his dad, but his dad wasn’t interested and declined the offer.

    And life simply carried on.

    Every now and then, throughout the years, Julian’s uncle would update us on what his father was doing and how he was doing. It seemed alcohol and depression were major parts of his life.

    I couldn’t help but feel responsible for this.

    Was he depressed because I took his only child away from him? Was this my fault? Whenever we got another update, I just felt guilty. Did I do this to him?

    The Call

    When I got the call, I was in complete shock. I had no idea his depression was that bad. How would I have known? Were there other factors that played a part in his suicide? Or was it just years of anguish knowing he had a son who was never a part of his life… because of me?

    Could this have been prevented if his son had been a part of his life? Did I do this??

    I cried for a week. I had never felt so much sorrow, and guilt. SO much guilt. Was I responsible for someone’s suicide?

    Dealing with My Grief and Guilt

    It took me a while to wrap my head around his suicide. It also took me a while to convince myself I was not responsible for it, nor should I feel guilty about it. I didn’t talk to anyone about this. No one would understand my feelings, and they were hard to explain.

    I realized, though, that he had been battling demons that had nothing to do with me. I made the best choice for my son, and that was the most important thing to me.

    He had made his choices as well. And I had nothing to do with them. Me not allowing him any visitation to his son was a result of his actions and choices. He chose his behavior. Not me. I chose to not have his behavior damage my child.

    I had to talk myself through that. It’s not your fault, Iva. He could have chosen to change his life, improve his life, reach out to his son more often, anything. And he chose not to.

    It’s not your fault, Iva.

    There is a tiny part of me inside that wishes things would have been different. If only he got help for his depression and alcoholism. If only he could have been a part of Julian’s life. If only he could have tried to help himself.

    I’m sorry his life ended so tragically. I’ll always feel sorry for that. But I won’t feel guilty about it anymore.

    It’s Not Our Fault

    It’s so easy to take responsibility for a loved one’s suicide, especially when you set a hard boundary for your own well-being. “If only I had done this or done that” or “if only I would have not done that,” but the reality is, it’s not our fault.

    We are not in control of how people think, act, react, or live their lives. We can only control our own lives. What people do with their own life is out of our hands. We can offer them tools and help, but it’s up to them to accept it and/or use it.

    If they don’t, that’s not our fault either. It’s easy to think that we should have/could have done more, but we did as much as we could. The rest was up to them.

  • Lessons and Gifts from Grief: What I Learned After Losing My Baby

    Lessons and Gifts from Grief: What I Learned After Losing My Baby

    Today marks the twenty-year anniversary of when I lost my first baby.

    I was, at the time, happily married and we were excited to start our family. My pregnancy was planned, wanted, and blissful. I was six months along. I was showing, and the baby was kicking vigorously. We had just moved into a wonderful house only a few blocks from my parents. Everything was absolutely golden.

    It took me a little while to find an OB-GYN in the area, so I was about a month late for my baseline ultrasound. We were very excited to get a clear view of our baby and find out the sex.

    The tech performed the ultrasound and was very quiet while my husband and I chatted excitedly. She told us it was a boy and then rushed out of the room to get the doctor.

    At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We discussed painting the nursery blue and confirmed our choice of name. But then I turned to my husband and said, “Did she seem weird to you?” It suddenly struck me that she was kind of abrupt.

    The next thing I knew, the radiologist was there delivering news that sucked all the air out of the room. Our baby was not viable. He had severe brain defects: Dandy-Walker malformation, an absent cerebellum, and extreme hydrocephalus. 

    I wailed. My husband stared blankly in shock. And then came the next news. We had to do something.  We had to end our baby’s life…and do it that day.

    Because of the laws governing “late term abortion,” I was right at the deadline for a procedure called a Dilation and Extraction. If I was past the deadline, I would have to be induced, labor, and deliver a dead baby. The doctor fudged my gestation by a week, just to be on the safe side.

    I called my mom to tell her. I will never forget the sound of her scream. I went straight to her house and my parents, my husband and I all piled into the car.

    I remember being shocked by what a lovely sunny day it was. How could the sky be so blue when this was happening?

    I went to a clinic to begin the dilation process. And they euthanized my child in my womb.  I won’t get into details, but it was so painful, I threw up from the pain and couldn’t get out of bed for hours afterwards. At the hospital a day later, I was put under and they took my baby.

    Sometimes, you have to make a decision without a choice. It didn’t seem right to me to continue with the pregnancy knowing my baby could die at any time. The doctors were shocked he had made it so far. I didn’t feel right about bringing a baby into this world to suffer and die. I was also mindful that I needed to preserve my own physical and mental health because I wanted to be a mother. In fact, eight weeks later, I was pregnant with my older son. He will be nineteen on December 19th.

    The grief was horrible. The shock amplified it. The happiest time of my life was turned into the saddest. 

    My family and friends rallied around me. My next-door neighbor, who is a yoga teacher, told me to “just come” to class. I did. Every day.

    I covered all the mirrors in my house because I couldn’t stand the sight of my body. I looked postpartum. My breasts were ready to nurse. But no baby.

    I made recovering from grief my full-time job.

    I painted an oil painting every day. I spent time in my rose garden. I prayed. I cried. I worked my way through the grief as expediently as I could so I could continue on my journey to motherhood. And I did.

    On the one-year anniversary of losing my first baby, I was just about full term with my older son. I was terrified I would lose him too. My pregnancy was fraught with anxiety, and it culminated at the end. But of course, the joy of delivering my son insulated me from the grief. It wasn’t until the second anniversary that I was finally able to process what had happened.

    Grief finds a way. There is no around, only through. Fighting it only makes it hurt more.

    I can remember feeling like shards of glass would come flying at me, and I needed to just let them pass through. There were times when I felt absolutely fine, and then the grief would overcome me. I called them cloudbursts. These were lessons I took into other experiences. I always say grief brings strange and beautiful gifts.

    I was with my grandfather as he died. I was one of my grandmother’s caregivers as she moved toward death. I was at my father’s bedside the moment he passed. Grief is different, but also the same every time you go through it. It will not be denied.

    I remember telling a family friend that as I healed from losing my baby, I could feel it becoming a part of me. I knew it would always be there, like a vein running through me.

    On this day, two children and two decades later, I honor my experience. I bless it for the lessons it taught me—not only about grief but about life in general.

    I had very black-and-white thoughts about abortion. I was raised Catholic. I was pro-choice for other people while “knowing” there were no circumstances under which I would have one. I was certain.

    And then something literally unimaginable happened. I learned that a huge portion of life is grey. 

    I learned that ambivalence is common.

    I learned that you don’t really know what you will do until you are faced with a situation. It’s not a question of knowing your own mind or having faith or holding certain values. It’s a question of the circumstance. It’s a matter of not having all the information until you are faced with it directly, in the moment. This has served me well.

    I have come to understand I will feel discomfiture, and it’s alright. I realize I will not always know what to do. I now know that sometimes I will do what I believe is “right” and I may never, ever be okay with it. Ever.

    And I also realize that judging someone else’s circumstances is nonsense. We all have struggles, and we all do the best we can. None of us can ever understand someone else’s challenge because it’s for them. The best we can do is be kind, supportive, and respectful.

    These are the lessons my lost baby taught me.

  • One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    One Question I Ask Myself Monthly Since Coming to Terms with Death

    “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

    On September 23, 2015, Loukas Angelo was walking to his after-school strength and conditioning class just a few hundred yards from Archbishop Mitty High School.

    He was approaching the outdoor basketball courts when he ran out into the street and was struck by a car traveling around thirty miles per hour. The impact sent Loukas flying down the street, and he was immediately transported to the closest hospital where he remained in critical condition.

    I remember sitting on the couch later that afternoon when my phone started blowing up. Feeling curious, I shoved aside my history homework and decided to see what was going on.

    Multiple people had sent some variation of the same text, “Yo. This is so sad. Did you hear about what happened with Loukas…?”

    Confused and a little bit scared, I turned to Twitter and started looking through my feed. I was absolutely floored by the tweets that were being sent out by my friends and our high school’s Twitter page.

    Similar to tragedies like the Boston Marathon, or 9/11, it was one of those moments in life where you’re always going to remember exactly where you were when you found out the news.

    It was almost inconceivable to think about the fact that I had walked across the same exact crosswalk where Loukas was hit just fifteen minutes prior.

    All throughout the night, support poured in from social media sites. The hashtag #PrayForLoukas was trending #1 on Twitter in my local area for several hours. I’m not a particularly religious person, but for the first time in years I said a prayer for Loukas before going to bed.

    The next day at school was one of the most eerie, heart-breaking days of my life. I arrived at Archbishop Mitty High school that day to a campus that was completely silent. Although there were plenty of people walking through the campus, no one said a word to each other

    As I walked toward my homeroom class, I remember seeing one kid carrying a ridiculously oversized backpack. It looked like he was at the airport preparing to leave for a month, and I let out a slight chuckle imagining what it was like to carry that thing around all day.

    However, my smile was wiped off my face completely when I stepped through the door of the classroom.

    Every one of my classmates was sitting there emotionless. Stone-faced. Not saying a word to each other. I sat down and did the same, as we were all preparing for an assembly in the gymnasium that was set to take place in about fifteen minutes.

    The 1400 students funneled into the gymnasium and took their seats. You could hear a pin drop.

    Our principal got up and gave a very powerful speech, which concluded with him leading the entire school in a prayer for Loukas. After a few others got up and spoke, the assembly concluded with a one-minute-long moment of silence.

    The day after the assembly, the news broke that Loukas had passed away after being in critical condition for around forty-eight hours.

    On September 25, 2015, Loukas Angelo lost his life at the age of fourteen years old

    Coming To Terms with Your Mortality

    As we go about our day-to-day lives, we are inundated with thousands of thoughts, most of them the same thoughts that ran through our head the day before.

    But very few of these thoughts, if any, are about our own mortality.

    It’s a little scary to think about the fact that you and everyone you know will perish from this world.

    No one knows when, but one day you will draw your last breath on this earth. Some people have the luxury of preparing for it, while others like Loukas have no idea that it’s coming.

    But at some point, death comes for each and every one of us.

    We all know this deep down, but it seems like so many of us live like we have unlimited time on this earth.

    We put off spending time with family even though they can be taken from us at any given moment.

    We refuse opportunities to get out of our comfort zone even though we have no idea how many of those opportunities we’re going to be given.

    In other words, most of us go through life without coming to grips with our own mortality.

    When Loukas passed, I obviously felt sorrow for his friends and family, who have to carry that burden around for the rest of their life.

    But mainly, I thought about Loukas.

    Given the nature of his death, he didn’t have any time to reflect back on his life. And given how young he was, if he did have that opportunity there wouldn’t be much to think about compared to someone on their deathbed at seventy or eighty years old.

    Yet, I couldn’t help but imagine what he would be thinking about in his final moments had he been given that opportunity. What regrets would he have? What moments would he replay in his head over and over again?

    Eventually, I started asking myself those same questions. It was a pretty cruel exercise that I was putting myself through, but it felt like a way to extract some meaning out of a terrible tragedy.

    As I imagined what it would be like to contemplate my existence at the end of my life, I didn’t feel happiness or satisfaction. I felt regret and shame.

    One common theme that permeated my consciousness was fear. I was only seventeen at the time, but I realized that essentially all of the regrets I’d have on my deathbed were a direct result of being afraid.

    Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. Fear of judgement.

    It was a brutal wake-up call. For the majority of my life, I had missed out on opportunities and experiences due to fear.

    I was here alive and breathing, but I wasn’t truly living. Merely existing, acting as if the end was never coming.

    How to Let Fear & Death Guide Your Actions

    I’m twenty-two now, and since then my approach to life has been simple.

    Twelve times per year, I do a monthly check-in with myself and ask myself one simple question:

    At this very moment, what am I avoiding in life because I’m afraid?

    The answers to this question inform me of exactly what changes that I should be making in my day-to-day life.

    Most people run from fear, but my suggestion is to lean into it. It’s actually an incredibly accurate predictor of the changes that you should be prioritizing in your life.

    It’s different for everyone.

    Some of you may be afraid of changing careers and pursuing something that you love because of the uncertainty that comes with changing professions.

    Some of you may be afraid of improving your social skills because that involves battling with the fear of rejection.

    Some of you may be afraid of moving to a different city because you’ll have to leave friends and family that you care about.

    If you have the courage to actually ask and answer the question, your fears will tell you exactly where your focus should be. It’s almost as if they’re calling out to you, saying:

    “Don’t forget about me. If you don’t take action, I’m going to torture your thoughts when you get to the end of your life.”

    Facing your fears is hard. Staying somewhere you don’t belong is even harder. But nothing compares to the pain of getting to the end of your life and knowing that you let fear stop you from doing the things you truly wanted to do.

    Just like Jim Rohn said, “We all must suffer one of two pains. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.”

    So I highly encourage you to ask yourself the question above each month and write down whatever comes to mind.

    Pick one of the things that you write down and make it the biggest priority in your life. You can’t fix everything about your life at once, as focusing on everything is the same thing as focusing on nothing.

    But once you’ve narrowed your focus, you can start taking small steps every day to overcome that fear.

    If you’re afraid of social interactions and have been for years, start saying hello to people as they walk by each day.

    If you’re afraid of starting a workout routine, start by walking for two minutes each day.

    These initial bursts of momentum that don’t seem like they make any difference are ultimately the foundation upon which your biggest changes take place.

    Do the things that you think you cannot do. Let the pain of not facing your fears override the pain of letting them fester for years and decades.

    Your future self will smile down at you.

    #LiveLikeLoukas

  • Honoring Lost Loved Ones: How I Carry My Son’s Memory into the Future

    Honoring Lost Loved Ones: How I Carry My Son’s Memory into the Future

    “Keep all special thoughts and memories for lifetimes to come. Share these keepsakes with others to inspire hope and build from the past, which can bridge to the future.” ~Mattie Stepanek

    I stood over a pile of my son’s t-shirts, scissors in hand, my breath ragged. I reached for a plain, dark blue one that I didn’t remember Brendan ever wearing. My fingers trembled. The first cut would be the hardest.

    I’d packed away his shirts eight years ago, within weeks after he’d died. He was only fifteen—an unbearable loss. I’d spent days washing and drying and folding his shirts into tiny perfect squares. My daughter Lizzie watched me put them inside my grandmother’s wooden hope chest.

    “When you go to college, I’ll make you a quilt out of Brendan’s shirts,” I said. “And one for Zack too.”

    I didn’t know how to make a quilt. I’d never sewn more than a straight line before. But I had time. Zack was thirteen, Lizzie ten. But the years passed. I walked by the chest every day and yet couldn’t seem to open it.  I was afraid of opening the lid and unleashing the pain hidden inside, like a Pandora’s box. I wasn’t sure if I could ever open it. When it was time for Zack to go to college, neither one of us mentioned it.

    But now, Lizzie was leaving for college in a week. I’d already bought her towels and dorm decorations and twinkling lights to chase away the shadows in her room. But she wanted the one thing I couldn’t buy. She wanted to take something of Brendan with her, something more than a collection of photos. There wasn’t time to make her a real quilt, but I could piece together blocks of his shirts for a blanket. That would be enough for her.

    I opened the chest and stared down at the shirts. So many blue ones. I couldn’t remember if that was my favorite color or his.

    He never cared about fashion, only comfort. I picked through the shirts and carried an armful down the stairs. A pajama top fell to the floor. It was gray and red fleece with a penguin applique near the bottom. At fifteen, he’d long outgrown animals on his clothes, but he still wore this one because it was so soft. I watched him once, falling asleep on the couch. As a toddler, he’d rub his fingers through his hair, but now his fingers rubbed across the penguin’s belly.

    I stared down at his shirts, seeing beyond the colors and patterns. I saw the stories of my son.

    I picked up his buttoned-down shirt with splotches of red on it. I only smelled the woodsy scent of the cedar-lined chest, but I closed my eyes and went back to the day when there was red sauce bubbling on the stove as I fried chicken cutlets in garlicky oil. Brendan snatched a piece of chicken and dipped it into the sauce, dancing away when I shooed at him with the wooden spoon. He never noticed the drops of red falling onto his shirt. I bent over the shirt now and took a deep breath, as if oregano and basil were still in the air.

    I unfolded a turquoise shirt, the one he wore on our last beach vacation. I could hear the ocean waves crashing against the sand and see the wind ruffling his hair as he held a giant crab dusted with Old Bay seasoning. He’s wearing it in one of our last pictures of him, the one we used for the funeral. I love that he’s holding this crab, with a smile of anticipation as he waited, savoring the moment.

    My hand shook as I cut through the penguin top, but the scissor moved through the fabric easily. I reached for another and then another as I cut the shirts apart until I had twelve squares. I saved every scrap, even the skinny ones that curled. I cupped them in my hands, and they spilled over like ribbons of memory.

    My daughter walked into the room, and I shrugged through my tears. “I’m not sure if I can do this.”

    She nodded. “It’s okay.”

    But it wasn’t. I desperately wanted to give her this gift. I imagined her sitting in her dorm room, wrapped in memories while making new ones.

    His stories lured me back to the table the next day. I arranged the squares on the kitchen counter, moving the blues and grays around. I was still overcome with emotion, but something shifted.

    Seeing the blocks of fabric shaped into something new filled me with hope. I played with the pieces, moving the penguin around, first next to the flag shirt and then next to the blue-striped one he wore for special occasions. I kept moving them around, playing with possibilities until I found the perfect combination.

    I sewed the pieces together, feeling a wave of excitement as the blanket grew. When I finished it, I smiled and held it up. This blanket was so much more than just a block of memories. I’d taken pieces of the past and transformed them into something new.

    I smiled, seeing Lizzie in her dorm room, snuggling beneath the quilt. I saw her moving into her first apartment, spreading it out on her couch. I pictured her years from now as she rocked her baby girl, the quilt wrapped around the two of them, their fingers tracing the outline of the penguin.

    I love looking through old pictures, but something special happens when we play with the memories of our lost loved ones. It doesn’t have to be a quilt. Perhaps a collage of photos arranged in different ways. Or a playlist of songs that spark a memory. Maybe a collection of recipes filled with their favorite foods. Or a tablecloth where everyone writes down a story of a loved one that makes them smile. When we create something new, we build a bridge of love that forever connects us to a loved one.

    Zack wants his own quilt now. He wants something different than Lizzie’s, one that has both his and Brendan’s shirts joined together. A quilt for brothers. I’m excited to start it. I’ll make one for me and my husband as well.

    Tomorrow, I will open the chest filled with memories. I will cut the t-shirts into pieces and pin them together.

    I will stitch my son into the present, so we can carry him into the future.

  • The Day I Found Out from the Internet my Estranged Father Had Died

    The Day I Found Out from the Internet my Estranged Father Had Died

    “The scars you can’t see are the hardest to heal.” ~Astrid Alauda

    On a lazy Sunday morning as I lounged in bed, I picked up my phone, scrolled through my news feed on Facebook, and decided to Google my parents’ names.

    I am estranged from my parents, and I have not had much of a relationship with them in over fifteen years; however, there’s a part of me that will always care about them.

    I Googled my mother’s name first and found the usual articles about her dance classes, and her name on church and community bulletin boards. From what I was able to find, it appeared she was doing well.

    Then I went on to Google my father’s name. The first item I came across was an obituary posted on the website of a business that provides cremation and burial services. However, there was no actual obituary, only a few pictures of a much younger man and a profile of a much older man.

    Was this my dad’s obituary? It couldn’t be, could it? In shock, I convinced myself that it wasn’t his obituary, but I could not shake the nagging feeling that it was.

    For the last month I had a feeling that something was off, that something terrible had happened or was going to happen. At the time I attributed these feelings to work stress and the global pandemic.

    When I learned of the death of one of my mentors, who had been like a father to me, I attributed these feelings to this experience. Could I have been wrong?

    Later that morning I decided to search for my dad’s name in the obituary section of the online local paper. His name came up instantly, and much to my horror, this was how I learned about his death.

    Shock washed over me as I read the obituary. He had been dead for a month when I began having those intense, unsettling feelings of foreboding, as if something terrible had happened. It all made sense.

    My full name, which I had legally changed several years ago, was mentioned in the obituary under his surviving relatives, which quickly turned my feelings of shock into rage. Did my family think that I didn’t care about him? Did they think that I didn’t have a right to know about his death?

    I reached out to members of my estranged support group only to learn that many others had found out about a parent’s passing in the same manner.

    Years earlier I had feared that I might find out about one of my parents passing through Google; however, I had dismissed the fear and forced myself to believe that someone in my family would tell me if one of my parents had passed.

    In the days and weeks that followed I continued to Google my dad’s name. As I read tributes written by friends and other family members, I was hit with the realization that I did not know the person they were describing.

    He was described as a “simple religious man who was a welcoming neighbor, a devoted friend, family man, and an excellent father.” To me, however, he was none of those things, and as I continued to read the tributes, sadness and anger washed over me, and I was forced to reflect on the painful relationship that I’d had with him.

    In kindergarten I remember him telling me over and over, “You are as dumb as a post.” Later, after a visit to see his father, he repeated his father’s hurtful words, “You’re a wild hair, and you’re going to come to a sad end.”

    He continued to repeat these words on a regular basis throughout our relationship. Every mistake I made was met with harsh judgements, such as “You will never be good at that, you were just wasting your time, you were never going to amount to anything.”

    When I failed, he rubbed my failures in my face, and to this day failure is one of my greatest fears despite becoming a somewhat successful professional and academic.

    Time and time again, he told me:

    “It would be much easier to care about you if you did well with your studies.”

    “You’re illiterate, you’re a delinquent, you’re a dunce, and you are an embarrassment.”

    “You are never going to amount anything; you are going to end up working a minimum-wage job with angry, stupid people.”

    “You are fat, you are lazy, you are unfocused, and you are wasting your time with that stupid piano; you will never amount anything with that hammering.”

    After I broke up with my first serious boyfriend, my father told me, “What do you expect? A person like you is naturally going to have problems with their relationships, I fully expect you to have serious problems in your marriage as well.”

    When I was preparing to move away to go to university, he told me, “When you flunk out, don’t expect to come back here, just find a minimum-wage job and support yourself.”

    It’s taken me years to realize that comments like these are verbal abuse!

    Verbal abuse can be disguised in the form of a parent insulting a child to do better, to push themselves to be more, to lose weight, or enter a particular field. It can be disguised as caring or wanting to push someone to be a better version of themselves. Regardless of the parent’s motive, insults and put-downs are, in fact, verbal abuse, and no number of justifications can change this.

    Verbal abuse can have devastating effects on a child’s life, and these effects can be felt well into adulthood.

    Throughout my childhood and into my teens, my parents’ abusive comments caused me to believe that no one would want me and that I was not good enough for anyone. This limiting belief inhibited my ability to form friendships. As a result, I spent much of my childhood and my teens alone, playing the piano or spending time with my pets.

    The friendships that I did form were often one-sided because I made it very easy for people to take advantage of me, because I believed that I had to give and give in order to be worthy of the friendship.

    I also feared failure more than anything else and became very anxious in any environment where I might fail. This inhibited me from trying new things, and I only engaged in activities I knew I was good at.

    It was not until my mid-teens that I met a mentor who not only saw my work but loved me and nurtured me as if I was his own daughter. For the very first time in my life, I had an adult to support me apart from my grandmother and my grandfather, who believed in me and reminded me every day of my value and my abilities.

    “You are good, you are smart and highly intelligent, you’re capable of doing anything you set your sights on,” he would tell me. At first, I did not believe him, but in time I slowly began to see myself through his eyes.

    He talked to me the way a loving parent would have. When I failed, he didn’t make fun of me; instead, he encouraged me to reflect on what I’d learned from the experience and how I could do better in the future.

    He instilled in me the foundation of shaky self-confidence that enabled me to have the courage to apply to university. Without this relationship, I would likely not be where I am today because I would not have had the courage to break free from the verbally abusive narrative my parents had taught me to believe, or to challenge this narrative.

    As I was reading attributes about my father in tributes from people who knew him, I was filled with a sense of longing. Had my dad been the man who was described in those tributes we could have had a healthy relationship, and I would not have had to make the painful decision to cut him out of my life.

    At the same time, these tributes forced me to accept that we are many things to different people. To some people we are a wonderful friend, a kind neighbor, and a loving parent, but to others we are a rude jerk, a self-centered person, and verbally abusive or neglectful parent. Each one of us has the right to remember the dead as they experienced them and honor their memory as we see fit.

    Years after cutting my parents out of my life I silently forgave them for the hurt they had caused me, and I worked to let go of the pain from the past. However, at times, I found myself fantasizing about what a healthy adult relationship could look like with my father.

    I imagined mutually respectful philosophical discussions, long walks, trips to far off places, and most importantly, being seen not as an unlovable failure, but as a successful adult worthy of love and acceptance.

    My last conversation with my father before my grandmother had passed away was positive, which only fueled these fantasies. Yet in these fits of fantasy, I was forced to accept my father for who he was and acknowledge the painful fact that some people are just not capable being who we need them to be.

    We can choose to plead for a relationship that will never be, or for the person to be something they are not, or we can choose to accept them as they are and accept ourselves in spite of their abuse. But this means we must let go and accept that the future holds time we can never have together.

  • We Have a Right to Grieve Losses Big and Small

    We Have a Right to Grieve Losses Big and Small

    Deppresive Man

    “Wisdom is nothing more than healed pain.” ~Robert Gary Lee

    It felt like I was being crushed by the weight of the world.

    “Impossible,” I thought.

    It’s impossible that people actually suffer this kind of pain and survive to tell the tale.

    When I thought about it, my stomach contracted as if I’d taken a blow to the gut. I’d gasp for breath and try to find some air through the tears and in between sobs.

    So this is what grief felt like.

    Now I understood why denial is the first stage of grief. How could you endure this kind of agony if you had to face the force of its full frontal attack?

    I felt sick and exhausted. I lay down and, although I expected never to find enough peace to sleep again, I quickly drifted off into a place where there was no more pain.

    When you think of grief, you think about a great loss.

    A death of a loved one, news of your terminal illness, and the loss of your home from the violent winds of a tornado are all acceptable events to grieve about.

    We can understand how any of the above can bring a person to their knees. We expect people to grieve over these losses.

    What we refuse to understand is the grief we feel over the smaller losses. (more…)

  • Grieving a Loss That Feels Like a Death

    Grieving a Loss That Feels Like a Death

    “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” ~Vicki Harrison

    Most grief books are written to help you mourn the death of a loved one and learn how to deal with their absence in this world.

    Death is probably the most challenging thing a human can face. It breaks us down. It brings us to our knees. Some people are so significant in our lives that the mere thought of living without them feels incredibly overwhelming and incapacitating.

    Losing someone we love is hard. Accepting loss is extremely challenging. So how do we cope with yearning and adapt to the emptiness following a divorce or huge breakup without feeling like a loser or the psycho who cant let go?

    It’s an unfair misconception to think that those who have a hard time letting go or are taking longer than usual time to move on are somewhat weak.

    Psychology agrees that when a major relationship or marriage ends, the person who was left may feel grief as painfully as someone who lost a loved one to death. Sometimes the pain can even be stronger.

    Divorces and breakups can sometimes be worse than death, because the person who died to us is very much alive, haunting our every thought.

    I remember how lost I felt right after Mr. Big broke things off with me for the 87th time. I remember packing my car with all my belongings and driving from San Francisco back to Los Angeles with our eight-month-old son in the car crying the entire six hour drive.

    I felt as if he had died. My whole world collapsed. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to support our son.

    I wondered how he would turn out without his father in his life. Would he feel unloved? Would he wonder why his father cut him off his life? Would he blame himself or think he wasn’t good enough for his dad?

    So many questions rushed through my mind while I drove through the vast freeway back home.

    I felt humiliated. I felt alone. I felt a variety of feelings and emotions. But the one that I always remember is the feeling of loss. I had lost everything I ever thought I would eventually have. The family, the life and most importantly: the man. The man I had loved for five years had died.

    His body was still there but his soul was gone. Everything I ever thought of him was gone. His words were gone. His spiritual presence was gone.

    There is a lot more to life than a physical body. Millions of people have experienced the death of their loved ones without ever having to plan their funeral.

    When I arrived home it was time to pick up the pieces and move on. At least that’s what everyone around me was telling me.

    They expected me to shake everything off and move on with my life as if my son’s father didn’t exist. As if our story didn’t happen. But accepting the death of someone in our lives is a process.

    I kept going back and forth between missing him and hating him for leaving. At times the mixed emotions felt like I was literally sinking into insanity. One moment I would cry and the next I would yell.

    Nobody told me that grief does that to people, and because I didn’t know what I was feeling was normal, I felt even more alone.

    I had never heard of the five stages of grief until I went to see a therapist, because the pain was so unbearable. It’s then I learned that a person goes through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance after the death (or loss) of a loved one.

    Unlike what I originally believed, there is no specific order to these feelings. You may feel as if you are on an emotional rollercoaster as you are jumping from stage to stage. Its important to know that this emotional ride is normal, and if you get the proper help you will get off of it alive and stronger.

    I know what it feels like to not want to get out of bed. I know what it feels like to not want to take a shower, or brush my teeth or even eat.

    I know what is like to lose twenty pounds in six weeks, to lose friends and to lose your dignity begging someone to take you back. I know the feeling that the world has ended and you were left behind alone and miserable.

    I have been there, so believe me when I say that there is hope.

    There is, in fact, a light in the end of the depression tunnel. But the only way to get to that light is to walk through it. There is no way of getting around the process, and the earlier you begin the journey of mourning and healing, the sooner you will reach peace.

    The journey is long, but there is no race and no competition. It’s a journey with yourself. There will be days when you will feel stronger than ever and some days will bring you back to your knees.

    Just remember: The rollercoaster is the journey. So even when you are down, feeling as if you’ve made no progress, remember that progress is being made every day you choose to be alive.

    Progress is being made every day you choose to not call the one who left you.

    Progress is being made every day you choose to take another breath.

    You are alive. You are strong. You will survive.