I'll Meet You There
Author's note:
I wrote most of this piece quite a while ago and then found it about a month ago and added a layer of what was going on then, namely my stepdad was dying...it's been a long time since I've written and so here is the more polished version of what I wrote then and then closer to now and reviewing now that Gary is dead makes me think this suffocating black cloud I'm living in won't last forever and for that I'm truly grateful I wrote this then, close to now and now:
When my dad died by suicide in 2008 I was estranged from him. I was in the midst of sorting out my postpartum anxiety after having my first baby whom he only met once. We were estranged because his behaviour had become increasingly unpredictable as his illness worsened and I was struggling with my own mental health problem because I was determined not to have one. It was complicated because protecting our new daughter from the dangerous side of his many mental illnesses seemed the only choice even though I still loved him and wanted to go back to a better time whenever that was. I felt completely lost, shocked and ashamed when he died.
Grief
My mom and sisters had moved in with us 9 months prior and my dad was sicker than ever and alone and then he was just gone. The moments of that evening jump around vivid in my mind. Our bodies buzzing and scattering like bumble bees after the officer told us he was dead. The unraveled moments of that night and the nights soon after I still carry with me and they creep up and singe me unexpectedly still. One particularly shameful outburst on my birthday 13 days later "How do you think I feel, no one even mentioned my birthday!" (cringe) will haunt me on every birthday to come with screams back of "YOU'RE JUST LIKE HIM, YOU'RE AWFUL" chasing me into my dreams every year after the cake is finished.
We went into full on survival mode as we each grieved in different ways under the same roof. We attended a support group for people related to those who had ended their own lives. It was a complicated, messy, stressed out, motherfucker of a time. We drank until we couldn't feel feelings more often than I should admit. We screamed and yelled and cried and I still marvel that any of us lived through it. It's remarkable that we picked up the pieces each day and made it to the shower and coffee having each morning and that somehow we arrived back in our beds each night breathing, even through racked sobs. The guilt and fear and terror of that time was palpable as we trudged through those darkest of days wondering where it all would lead, wondering how it all got so fucked up, lost in why we didn't get the chance to repair any of the things.
"I'll Meet You There"
I first heard "I'll meet you there" from a blogger I follow. She lost her daughter to cancer when her sweet girl was 4. It made so much sense to me that there is a place we will meet our loved ones again even if we didn't know all the details. Maybe she has a solid idea of where "there" is but to me it just sounded comfortingly open to interpretation.
I have always been black/white, right/wrong, in/out with very little in between but I'm softening in my middle age as I realize that life is really nothing but a big cloudy grey area. I was deeply religious for most of my teen years with a solid idea of how it was all going to go down after this life but tearing myself away from the church and having to develop my own ideas of how it goes when we die was too hard so I didn't think about it much until my dad died.
I had no easy answers for where his soul went. Where did the most complicated relationship I've ever had move to? Why did I feel like it wasn't over yet? I had always fantasized about a time where we could go back to the pure love that exists behind all of our complicated family crap. Where we could just shed all the hurt and pain and anger and repair that damage and trauma with pure love.
Birth and Death
I've always been obsessed with birth. I love attending births. I really loved giving birth. I love newborns. We are all born in this miraculous moment where the universe goes quiet for a split second and everything makes sense and the veil is thin and we can see that big, huge, beautiful picture and breathe it into our very breakable bones. It's like nothing else: the moment a baby comes into the world.
I'm learning that death is just as fascinating and sacred as birth. Veil thin, the universe completely making sense for a split second and then making no sense after (a lot like when you bring your newborn home actually). I have harboured a deep interest and respect for how people process the death of their loved ones since losing my dad. In spite of how difficult it is, we are still able to make whole and full lives around and between birth, death and grieving. Happy/Sad all of it. Grieving is a process that I find endlessly interesting and am finding myself being thrust into grieving again now. The dead weight (quite literally) that we manage to carry along with us after deep loss is coming for me again.
Preparing To Lose Another Dad
I'm reading sad stories, death memoirs, memoirs of great loss and tragic accidents. I read sad stories but they don't make me sad. I get strength from their strength and I find it so inspiring how people are able to find joy and meaning in spite of their pain and the senseless way loss works. It's reassuring to bear witness to those that have made beauty out of their suffering, like lotus flowers literally emerging beautiful and whole from shallow murky water. I'm preparing for my own rise from the depths again even as I'm being pulled under. I'm slowly acclimatizing to the reality that deep loss will always be a part of living a wholehearted life.
"I'll meet you there" really snuggled up to me back when I first heard it and today it makes me feel better as I look ahead to the losses that are coming and my own eventual death (60 years from now in a freak accident).
Where Do I Go From There and Here
My path since my dad died has been complicated as all paths tend to be. I'm sure his own journey has been equally complex. My mom's path lead her to meeting Gary and then marrying him after his ominous diagnosis last year. Gary is full of love and light and support and understanding. What a fucking gift. Having Gary has been one of my life's biggest improvements and it's a total bullshit nightmare that our time with him is being cut so short.
How do we go through this new loss and make sense of why people are taken from us? I don't think I'll ever fully understand it and I don't know where this "there" is or how we get "there" or why I feel so strongly that "there" is where we will cross paths again with our loved ones and right all of our wrongs and the shit we suffered each other in this life will not exist and we will be able to just feel love.
Onward (now)
Now that Gary is gone I feel like that same heavy weight is on me. I can't find enough or the right time for crying and it's building up and I know it's going to come out in the grocery store or at kid pick up so I'm putting it on the schedule. Missing him is so different than missing my dad which is to be expected. I'm embracing that each loss in this life is going to come with new levels of pain and suffering and also new lessons (always with the lessons! GAH!).
When we die, I believe we will feel that same big love we feel in the moment a baby is born. The love that fills all of your empty spaces and hurts in your chest and makes the universe go silent for that split second. Just for a second we will just feel pure love as we're born again, cleansed through death and ready for just love. This is what I keep telling myself anyway, this is how it makes sense for now. Making space for myself and my grieving family is hard work. I just need to keep reminding myself that I don't get to choose when the work is done and until my time here is over I keep saying to myself "I'll meet them there" and that makes the work slightly less grueling so I'll take it.
I wrote most of this piece quite a while ago and then found it about a month ago and added a layer of what was going on then, namely my stepdad was dying...it's been a long time since I've written and so here is the more polished version of what I wrote then and then closer to now and reviewing now that Gary is dead makes me think this suffocating black cloud I'm living in won't last forever and for that I'm truly grateful I wrote this then, close to now and now:
Dead Dad
When my dad died by suicide in 2008 I was estranged from him. I was in the midst of sorting out my postpartum anxiety after having my first baby whom he only met once. We were estranged because his behaviour had become increasingly unpredictable as his illness worsened and I was struggling with my own mental health problem because I was determined not to have one. It was complicated because protecting our new daughter from the dangerous side of his many mental illnesses seemed the only choice even though I still loved him and wanted to go back to a better time whenever that was. I felt completely lost, shocked and ashamed when he died.
Grief
My mom and sisters had moved in with us 9 months prior and my dad was sicker than ever and alone and then he was just gone. The moments of that evening jump around vivid in my mind. Our bodies buzzing and scattering like bumble bees after the officer told us he was dead. The unraveled moments of that night and the nights soon after I still carry with me and they creep up and singe me unexpectedly still. One particularly shameful outburst on my birthday 13 days later "How do you think I feel, no one even mentioned my birthday!" (cringe) will haunt me on every birthday to come with screams back of "YOU'RE JUST LIKE HIM, YOU'RE AWFUL" chasing me into my dreams every year after the cake is finished.
We went into full on survival mode as we each grieved in different ways under the same roof. We attended a support group for people related to those who had ended their own lives. It was a complicated, messy, stressed out, motherfucker of a time. We drank until we couldn't feel feelings more often than I should admit. We screamed and yelled and cried and I still marvel that any of us lived through it. It's remarkable that we picked up the pieces each day and made it to the shower and coffee having each morning and that somehow we arrived back in our beds each night breathing, even through racked sobs. The guilt and fear and terror of that time was palpable as we trudged through those darkest of days wondering where it all would lead, wondering how it all got so fucked up, lost in why we didn't get the chance to repair any of the things.
"I'll Meet You There"
I first heard "I'll meet you there" from a blogger I follow. She lost her daughter to cancer when her sweet girl was 4. It made so much sense to me that there is a place we will meet our loved ones again even if we didn't know all the details. Maybe she has a solid idea of where "there" is but to me it just sounded comfortingly open to interpretation.
I have always been black/white, right/wrong, in/out with very little in between but I'm softening in my middle age as I realize that life is really nothing but a big cloudy grey area. I was deeply religious for most of my teen years with a solid idea of how it was all going to go down after this life but tearing myself away from the church and having to develop my own ideas of how it goes when we die was too hard so I didn't think about it much until my dad died.
I had no easy answers for where his soul went. Where did the most complicated relationship I've ever had move to? Why did I feel like it wasn't over yet? I had always fantasized about a time where we could go back to the pure love that exists behind all of our complicated family crap. Where we could just shed all the hurt and pain and anger and repair that damage and trauma with pure love.
Birth and Death
I've always been obsessed with birth. I love attending births. I really loved giving birth. I love newborns. We are all born in this miraculous moment where the universe goes quiet for a split second and everything makes sense and the veil is thin and we can see that big, huge, beautiful picture and breathe it into our very breakable bones. It's like nothing else: the moment a baby comes into the world.
I'm learning that death is just as fascinating and sacred as birth. Veil thin, the universe completely making sense for a split second and then making no sense after (a lot like when you bring your newborn home actually). I have harboured a deep interest and respect for how people process the death of their loved ones since losing my dad. In spite of how difficult it is, we are still able to make whole and full lives around and between birth, death and grieving. Happy/Sad all of it. Grieving is a process that I find endlessly interesting and am finding myself being thrust into grieving again now. The dead weight (quite literally) that we manage to carry along with us after deep loss is coming for me again.
Preparing To Lose Another Dad
I'm reading sad stories, death memoirs, memoirs of great loss and tragic accidents. I read sad stories but they don't make me sad. I get strength from their strength and I find it so inspiring how people are able to find joy and meaning in spite of their pain and the senseless way loss works. It's reassuring to bear witness to those that have made beauty out of their suffering, like lotus flowers literally emerging beautiful and whole from shallow murky water. I'm preparing for my own rise from the depths again even as I'm being pulled under. I'm slowly acclimatizing to the reality that deep loss will always be a part of living a wholehearted life.
"I'll meet you there" really snuggled up to me back when I first heard it and today it makes me feel better as I look ahead to the losses that are coming and my own eventual death (60 years from now in a freak accident).
Where Do I Go From There and Here
My path since my dad died has been complicated as all paths tend to be. I'm sure his own journey has been equally complex. My mom's path lead her to meeting Gary and then marrying him after his ominous diagnosis last year. Gary is full of love and light and support and understanding. What a fucking gift. Having Gary has been one of my life's biggest improvements and it's a total bullshit nightmare that our time with him is being cut so short.
How do we go through this new loss and make sense of why people are taken from us? I don't think I'll ever fully understand it and I don't know where this "there" is or how we get "there" or why I feel so strongly that "there" is where we will cross paths again with our loved ones and right all of our wrongs and the shit we suffered each other in this life will not exist and we will be able to just feel love.
Onward (now)
Now that Gary is gone I feel like that same heavy weight is on me. I can't find enough or the right time for crying and it's building up and I know it's going to come out in the grocery store or at kid pick up so I'm putting it on the schedule. Missing him is so different than missing my dad which is to be expected. I'm embracing that each loss in this life is going to come with new levels of pain and suffering and also new lessons (always with the lessons! GAH!).
When we die, I believe we will feel that same big love we feel in the moment a baby is born. The love that fills all of your empty spaces and hurts in your chest and makes the universe go silent for that split second. Just for a second we will just feel pure love as we're born again, cleansed through death and ready for just love. This is what I keep telling myself anyway, this is how it makes sense for now. Making space for myself and my grieving family is hard work. I just need to keep reminding myself that I don't get to choose when the work is done and until my time here is over I keep saying to myself "I'll meet them there" and that makes the work slightly less grueling so I'll take it.
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