Coffee Chat: A Season of Grief

 

Hello dears.  Do come in.  Won't you have a nice warm drink?  I have Christmas blends of coffee: Santa's White Christmas and a Vanilla Caramel blend and oh yes, that Peppermint blend that Samuel bought for me last winter.  I feel the need of something festive, whether I'm in the festive mood or not.  Won't you have some with me and let us sit down and have a heart to heart today?

Autumn is nearing an end and Winter will soon be here.  I think people mentally accept winter's beginning as December 1.  Thanksgiving, which seems such an autumnal celebration for us here in the States, is over.  December ushers in winter.  This year the leaves were on the ground, no longer fluttering upon the trees well before December 1.  We've had frost and honest to goodness cold and somehow it feels winter has already arrived.  It's not a solstice thing.  It's a recognition of seasonal signs really.  People are ready for the next thing, aren't they?  For the gifting season and the turning of the old year into a new one.

For myself, I've felt sad for the dwindling year.  Somehow the end of summer was a painful loss to me this year and watching the lovely autumn unfold, slow and leisurely and full of beauty such as we seldom see, I was filled with heartache each time I gazed upon the glory of it all.  

Thanksgiving this year was got through with minor depth soundings.  But I felt...well to be honest, I didn't know exactly what I felt.  I was stressed.  I am stressed.  And frustrated.  Irritated.  Tired and weary. Overwhelmed.  But there was something under the surface, something I was familiar with and yet didn't recognize.  In my few moments alone, I often found myself weeping.

Journaling finally revealed the problem.  I was sad, deeply sad and at the same time I was sorrowing.

I felt the weight of the various sorrows of people all about me.   I felt them deeply, as though they were my own.  The sorrow of being old and fearing you are unloved.  The sorrow of finding yourself ill and alone.  The sorrow of broken promises in marriage.  The sorrow of a small child who seeks and willingly gives love but is often rebuffed and set aside.  The sorrow of grown children who don't understand the intricacies of life.  The sorrow of broken hearts.  The sorrow of what might have been, and the sorrow of what cannot be.  The sorrow of loss.  The sorrow of knowing you have failed.  The sorrow of a child who doesn't understand why another requires more than they. The sorrow of one who feels unloved and from whom others keep their distance because of the toxicity of their nature.  

The sorrows kept piling up and I felt almost physical pain as the heap of sorrows grew and grew.  I was overwhelmed with this great heavy weight of sorrows to the point of actually saying to John, "I'm depressed.  I feel sad in a way I haven't felt in years upon years." 

 I realized later that it wasn't just sadness.  It is grief.  I grieve for others.  I grieve for myself.  I grieve.

Over the past four years, there are things I haven't shared, things I can't say.  They are not my stories to share and the part that is mine I felt I couldn't share.  The autumn behind us was just another chapter in the story.  Every single day there is a new wave of sorrow and regret and loss to greet me. 

I long to speak of this grief but John and I dance about it, speaking only in short sentences of aspects of it and then hastily twirling away from it as though we are dancing on embers of fire.  It's hard and painful, unresolved and seemingly is going on and on and on. So here we are.  Mute.  Weary.  Doing our best.  

Secret griefs are difficult partly due to shame, the shame of finding ourselves in this place, in these circumstances.  Shame because we are having trouble adjusting.  Shame because the situation we are dealing with feels like failure on our part.    

And then there is the guilt that also goes with it.  Guilt over feeling sad when some of the trouble that ails us is really not our trouble but the accepted burdens of another's trials.  Guilt that we aren't handling things patiently or smoothly or easily.   Guilt because when we strike out it is often at one another.  And guilt too because more than anything, I am so tired, and I'd rather not be here doing what I'm doing in the midst of this.  I'd like to abandon ship and swim, no matter how far the nearest piece of land, and be a castaway.  I would rather just not deal with any of it anymore.  Guilty because I'm needed and I know it, but I long to lay down and rest and focus on nothing or something less trying, anything but the troubles before me.  

There's a certain pridefulness in it all as well.  We are doing this without asking anyone's help except God's, without letting anyone else help bear the burden by sharing what's on our hearts and minds.  It's just a sham.  Foolish pride.  Foolish guilt.  

And finally, there's fear.  Fear of doing so much that we cripple those who need our help, fear that we'll say the wrong thing at the wrong time, fear that we aren't wise enough, fear that we are offending, or aren't patient enough or doing any good at all and are just selfish.  Oh! there's such a mixed lot of feelings going on!

I've found myself thinking a lot about this season and its tie to grief.   I think grief is the unnamed emotion that is caught Christmas.  Why?    

Someone must surely have been grieved at God's silence.  400 years without a word, without a prophet to share just one word, without anything more than tales handed down of men who once spoke with and heard from God.    Imagine a man who hears God speak when no one has heard from God for 400 years and then he is silenced unable to tell of this powerful message.  Surely, he was grieved.  How does one navigate through a season of shepherds awed by angels' light when you are caught up in darkness?  How does one reconcile grief with the wonder of a baby in the manger come to save the world or strangers when we can't accomplish saving one, we love? How does grief tie in with joy?  How does one even consider grief in this season of festivities, this time of wonders?   

God himself must have grieved.  Not only were men stiff-necked and stubborn, but they had gotten so caught up in ritual and ceremony and vice that they no longer knew Him.    We sing "Mary Did You Know?" but we never stop to think that God knew how the baby's life would end.  He knew that sending this baby, this son of His own spirit, into the world would result in a painful rejection on a Cross.  Could He step back and look at the gain, the Gentiles who did repent and come to Him, without grief for the son He gave to the world?  Without grief for those whom He called His own people who refused and rejected Him again?  I don't know.  I don't know.

I made it through the Thanksgiving hurdle, and I was glad that it went as smoothly as it did.  I was in full overwhelm by the day of feasting and though there were spikes and prods and goads hitting at my ankles, those were ignored by all but my heart.  It is the same each year, especially if there are others about, strangers unfamiliar with the family histories.   

Not that I wanted to share those histories but another one had a fresh audience you see, so the stories were told with that personal point of view twist that has a grain of truth but little to do with reality.  

In 2005, on Thanksgiving Day at my mother's house, my brother made comment that he'd been taking care of our father who had been sick and that he was going out of town that weekend.  He asked if I'd stop in and check on Daddy.  I said I would, though I willingly admit, I was loathe to do so.  

My father had disappeared from our lives in 1991 when he and my mother divorced.  I was an adult, not a child.  I wasn't hurt by his disappearance.  My relationship with my father at that time was as distant at best.  We were never particularly close to Daddy, not any more than we were to one another.  In our household all loyalty could only be for one person and that person alone.   So, when my father disappeared it was not as great loss as you might think.  Since he'd never been one to stay in touch, nor to return a phone call or reply to a letter, we assumed he simply wanted no part of us and that proved to be true.

In early summer 1997, my middle brother took his life. He and I had finally developed a relationship of sorts in the intervening years and while we weren't in constant communication, we were friendly and enjoyed being in one another's company.  He'd been through a hard battle with depression and following hospitalization, he went back to work at a job that was truly a hardship for someone dealing with depression.  He had to work all sorts of shifts, his sleep patterns were totally disrupted and then something happened on the job.  A robbery took place.  My brother blamed himself.  No one was harmed but money was stolen.  No one blamed him, but nevertheless he felt he'd failed in his responsibilities.  Two days later he took his life.

After his funeral my younger brother was determined to find our father.  He finally tracked him down in Washington, D.C.  He brought Daddy here to his property and set him up in a place of his own.  He lived just across the field from me and in all that time, I'd never been encouraged to visit or call, nor would he visit or call here. I think I saw Daddy a total of five times in eight years of his living here.  When I was tasked with the responsibility of telling him that his only brother had taken his life, he answered his front door and bellowed at me "Right now is not a good time for a visit!"  He started to shut the door in my face.    I said quietly, "Well you let me know a good time to tell you that your brother is dead, and I'll get back with you."   He opened the door, and I walked in.  We sat together in silence as he absorbed the news.   It was the first time I'd seen him to speak to in two years.  It would be another year before I'd speak to him again.  That's the relationship we had. 

In 2005, about this time of year, I went into my father's home with ambivalence.  I was unsure if he'd be welcoming and unsure of what exactly was expected of me and unsure of how I felt, if I truly was able to be the sort of Christian I wanted to be.  I was still plumbing the depths of forgiving that was required of me.

I walked into the house that day into darkness.  The curtains were pulled tight, a heater burned hot enough to keep the place at about 90F and the walls were an olive brown from the build-up of cigarette smoke.  

The man lying on the couch didn't look at all like my father.  My father had always been fastidious about his appearance.   His hair, which had always been neatly cut, hung past his shoulders.  He had a beard that was nearly to his stomach.  His skin was black with grime.  He was thin, something he'd never been in all the years I knew him.  He'd never been fat mind you; he was always a healthy size for his height, but now he looked nothing like himself.  His fingernails and toenails were long.  If ever a man looked to be a hermit/recluse, this man did. This was not the well dressed, handsome man I knew as my father.  

I knew instinctively that whatever was wrong with him was more than just being a little sick.

I stood there looking at him, filled with so much emotion, listened to him telling me what he wanted me to do for him, and I said, "I'll just start by giving you a bath first, okay?"  

I took over his care in a complete way, in a way I never ever expected to care for the man who had always been on the edges of my life even while living in the same house, a man so private that I barely knew him beyond appearance.  Yet I was performing the most intimate of tasks for him.

So began a season with my father.

I trimmed and cut and bathed and wiped and washed.  I did laundry and scrubbed walls and cooked meals and shopped.  I didn't spend all day each day with him, but I was there most mornings and another hour or so come evening.  I wiped his bottom and cleaned up his messes and I asked him each day when he would see a doctor.  "Oh sometime...when your brother's going in that direction...maybe," he'd reply.

These were hard days, harsh ones, grueling.  At that time, Katie was in school, John working those stupid crazy shifts he worked where he was gone for basically two weeks a month.  Mama had had ankle surgery that fall and was still recovering so she needed care.  Granny was declining.  I was running four households at once and trying to keep up with them all.  

I was often tired and impatient and prone to short replies at times.  I tried to patiently take criticism, but I was often frustrated and irritated. I tried and tried and tried to be better.  Many and many a day I walked out of daddy's house and sat in my car and sobbed uncontrollably, great heaving sobs that shook me and shook the car.  And when I was done, I wiped my face, and I went on to the next hard thing.

One cold bright day, when the sunlight was shining in the windows, I stood gazing out at the trees.  Daddy's lunch was heating on the one eye burner he had for cooking. My hands were deep in dishwater.  The house was clean.  He was clean.  I thought him sound asleep, taking his morning nap. 

I stood gazing out the window and felt a deep solid sense of peace steal over me, like someone dropping a cloak about my shoulders soft and warm.  I turned to look at him and he was looking at me.  "I don't know if I've ever said how much I love you or how proud I always was of you and your brothers," he said to me...That rock hard place in my heart was gone and I was changed.  Forgiveness, something I'd fought against and then sought in a hundred ways, had come upon me quietly in that peace I'd felt just a moment before.  "I love you too, Daddy."

On January 3, I walked into the house and found Daddy on the floor next to the couch.  There was an ice cream pail next to him on the floor.  He'd coughed and vomited up huge blood clots into it, some as large as my hand. 

I called my brother and asked him to come get Daddy up from the floor.  He'd soiled himself again, and apparently had been trying to get up to go to the bathroom so that I wouldn't have to clean him.  I promised him I'd clean him up and put fresh clothes on him, when he was back on the couch.  I told him after that the ambulance would pick him up and take him to the hospital that morning and he'd be seen to once and for all.   I voiced my suspicions that he had cancer.  He lay silent upon the couch as I attended to him. No more refusals.  When I'd cleaned him, my brother called the ambulance.  I picked up John at our house, then followed the ambulance over to the hospital in a cold and dreary downpour.

The doctor on duty was someone John knew from his local hospital who was working in the neighboring county.   He examined Daddy thoroughly and told him he was rundown and needed to be built up.   He showed me the x-ray in another room.  There was a dinner plate sized tumor on my father's right lung.  The doctor said he'd tell my dad that afternoon after more tests, but he most certainly had cancer.  He asked me to go home and come back the next day. 

The next day I walked in his hospital room, and Daddy told me he knew the diagnosis. I asked him quietly, "Daddy, I know you were baptized years ago, but are you saved?"  and his reply was "Me and God have an understanding..."  "Not good enough. You need more than an understanding...you need a relationship.  You know this."  

The third day, I had a duty at church to attend to.  Daddy was transferred to the hospital in Macon.  I spoke to him on the phone, while I was working at church.  "I want you to know that I'm right with Jesus now, Terri..."  My eyes welled with tears.  We spoke a little further and then he said "I don't want any life saving measures done..."  "Then ask your nurse to send social services in so that you can do a Do Not Resuscitate order..."  The nurse was in the room and the social worker was called.  I told him I'd see him the next day.  That was the last I spoke to him.  He died at 2 am that morning.

At the time when I was going through all of this, I didn't share it on my blog or in newsletters.  It was such a hard season, filled with such overwhelming and strong emotions and hurts and grief that I glossed over it.  "I did Daddy's laundry..."  "I cooked lunch for Daddy..."   "I took Mama to the doctor."  "I had breakfast with Granny," that might be what I'd share but no one knew of the heart rending sobs, the weariness or the number of tasks I did each day.  It was my secret grief.  Something that I was going through but that was so painful and full of emotion that I couldn't share it.   I had a difficult time even giving John insights into my thoughts and feelings at that time.  I have a hard time sharing all this even now.  It seems too private to share still.  

Well. That's what was brought up on Thanksgiving, but not as I've told it.   As it was imagined by the other person.   As though there were special favoritism, a relationship that hadn't even existed.  As though I'd betrayed that one person only loyalty in caring for Daddy at that time.  I told John later that night, "I didn't go out of loyalty or even love.  I went because I was asked to do so.  I wouldn't have let a stray dog stay in the circumstances I found Daddy that day..."  And John nodded because he knew it was truth.

There have been a thousand interruptions to this post.  I began it days ago and had we really tried to sit down for a cup of coffee together, you would soon have excused yourself and not hurried to return again.  Not just because of the dark mood but because of the sheer craziness of life.  

It's not the season I'd choose if it were up to me but it's the season I'm in.  And I suppose given the time it's taken to write this out, I'll call this good enough for now.