learning to let go of what I cannot control

For today’s prompt, write a control poem. That is, write about having control, losing control, or sharing control with others. Of course, I expect at least one person to mention the control key on keyboards. And well, y’all always surprise me, because I can’t control which direction everyone is going to go with this prompt. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

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(I have read some COVID-19 coping advice to this effect, so I make no claim that these ideas are original, but they are definitely helpful to me!)

control

I can control
how I spend my time
what I consume
including what I read online,
whether I get enough sleep
(not doing so well with that one)
my own response to what happens around me.

I have more inner resources to exert control
if I practice self care
(including the sleep part mentioned above)
and don’t let my cup get too empty.

I cannot control
whether other people in my city and state follow rules
what the government does or does not do
whether anyone in my family is exposed to the virus
(other than taking precautions as best we can).

I cannot control anyone, not a single person, other than myself
no matter how closely related we may be
or how much influence I feel I should have.

And so I must let go of the hope of such control
and focus on my tiny sphere of influence
and on making the best decisions for myself
and for the good of my community.

I would like to have more control!
But I have gotten used to disappointment.

poem: the optimist who was wrong

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “The (blank) Who (blank),” replace the blanks with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: “The Runner Who Walked,” “The Scientist Who Decided to Make a Monster,” “The Poet Who Loved Me,” and/or “The Teacher Who Couldn’t Learn.” If you’d prefer to write about a thing instead of a person, feel free to replace the word “who” with the word “that.” — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

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The optimist who was wrong

“It’s fine! I’m fine; everything’s fine!”
Rader said to me, exasperated,
as I tried to engage him in conversation
in the car after school, in the spring of 10th grade,
regarding my concerns about his mental health.
It was not something he wanted to talk about.
It didn’t seem to help him to hear I was worried.

“We’re struggling, but it’s going to be OK,”
I said to my friend and coach,
after her morning boot camp class
early in summer, as we chatted while we stretched.

Two days later he was gone.
We had done all we could,
gotten him all the help there was.
I thought we would be OK.

I was wrong.

---

This poem is a darker one. It’s odd, the things that get burned into your memory when an unexpected tragedy explodes your generally neat and tidy life. That very night when Rader died by suicide, I was at a support group meeting. I boasted proudly to my friends there that my husband and I had “successfully raised (our older child — who was 18 and had that week graduated high school) to adulthood.” And we had. But as I was saying it, the worst of all failures was happening back at home. Not that that makes me a failure as a parent. I know I did the best I could. But the irony of it gets me.

I’m still an optimist. It’s how I’m wired. But I have a dark streak now. It’s easier for me to imagine the worst happening. Because now I know it can, and does.

poem-a-day: community of women

For today’s prompt, write an ekphrastic poem. An ekphrastic poem is one that’s inspired by a work of art, whether that’s a painting, photograph, sculpture, or some other creation. I’ve included five ekphrastic prompts below. Look them over and choose one (or more) to prompt your poem today. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

Ekphrastic prompt #3

We found each other

We were bright girls who loved books
we were fellow scouts in your mom’s troop
we were freshmen in the same dorm
we were going to save the world: idealists at 20.

We were pregnant at the same time,
seeking connection in
the brave new world of online message boards
(still together as our babies turn 21).

We worked out at the same Curves
we were moms of Montessori kids
we were ladies learning tae kwon do, or yoga, or indoor rowing.

At every stage of life,
whomever we needed,
one best friend or an iVillage,

we found each other.

poetry month: the inscrutable future

For today’s prompt, write a future poem. The future is a never ending well of worry for some. Others harbor a great deal of optimism. Still others see a mixture of awesome flying cars and terrifying robot overlords. Regardless of your outlook, I hope there’s a poem in your very near future. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

---

Right now it feels as if
the future will never arrive.
The days drag on
inside our homes
as we social distance
and shelter in place,
as we stay home
to flatten the curve.

Yet it also seems
as if we are hurtling into it
— thoroughly unprepared —
day after day
as the news firehose spews
and the numbers pile up
and we struggle to make sense of it all
when it’s impossible to put into context
because these are times like we’ve never seen.

So then how can we even imagine
whatever future follows
these unprecedented events
we can’t even believe we’re living through
while we are in fact living through them?

The future advances upon us
every moment
and in the same breath
we welcome it with the hope of relief
and we dread what new horror it might bring.

When this is over
— whatever that even means —
what does that future hold?

It comes. Fast or slow, it comes.
And we will meet it.

poem-a-day challenge: lucky or unlucky

We’re a week into the challenge now, and we get to celebrate with our first “Two-for-Tuesday” prompt! You can pick your favorite prompt, do both separately, or combine them into one poem. Your choice.

For today’s prompt:

1. Write a lucky poem and/or…

2. Write an unlucky poem.

Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want. In other words, it’s more important to write a new poem than to stick to the prompt.

— Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

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Gloom, despair …

When I was little, we used to watch Hee Haw every week,
sitting on the harvest gold velveteen couch:
mom, dad, two blond little girls in pigtails.

Roy Clark and the guys would drink their moonshine,
and sing
(and groan),

“Gloom, despair, and agony on me-e! (Woe!)
Deep dark depression, excessive misery-y! (Woe!)
If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all! (Woe!)
Gloom, despair, and agony on me-e-e!”

And then they’d tell a story,
one after the other,
of what it was that had them feeling so down,
with the last guy getting the punchline.

Looking back, I appreciate
that the memories I have
of this particular bastion of bad luck
are good ones, happy ones.

Gloom, despair,
and all was well.

trapped

When we finish today’s poem, we’ll be officially 20% of the way through this challenge. Poem by poem, we’re building up some great first drafts. So let’s keep it going!

For today’s prompt, write a trap poem. There are physical traps—like mouse traps and bear traps. But people also sometimes fall into language traps or social traps. Many competitive types in business and various games try to set traps for their competitors. Of course, for every person setting a trap, there’s likely another person trying to avoid falling into traps. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

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My thinking about this one is a bit intertwined with the wish poem prompt of a couple days ago. “Be careful what you wish for” insinuates that something that seemed desirable on the surface could be a trap when actually experienced.

Many of us who have lost a loved one want nothing more than to have that person back in our lives. But one tenet of wish lore (true at least in Disney’s Aladdin) is that you can’t wish someone back from the dead. The Genie states it explicitly in his rules. I can absolutely see how receiving your loved one back from the dead could turn out to be a trap. Ever read (or see the movie) Pet Sematary? If that’s not a cautionary tale, nothing is! I realize I’m talking about literature — fairy tale and horror — rather than real life, but I’m a believer that a lot of real-world lessons can be learned from books!

It’s a trap

Trapped between what I wish and what I know,
I long for an alternate universe
in which I’ve raised two children to adulthood,
not just one.

There are so many possible paths
and yet we only get to walk one.
We choose the direction
we think is best,
or a course is determined for us,
and often there’s no going back.

But too many choices
also can be a trap
in which we spin and spin
and never move along.

And sometimes we want to make a choice
when none is available to us
and so we pine for it
and maybe stop living the life we do have
because we don’t see how.

So many ways to be trapped.
So hard to be set free.

poem-a-day: just a moment

For today’s prompt, write a moment poem. The moment could be this very moment in time. Or pick a moment from your past and dive into it. It could be a huge moment or event in your life (or the life of another). Or you could share a small, private moment–like a walk at night or solitary adventure.

Remember: These prompts are just springboards; you have the freedom to jump in any direction you want. In other words, it’s more important to write a new poem than to stick to the prompt. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

Did you know if someone can get through a suicidal crisis, chances are they will not go on to die by suicide? *

Just a moment

If you could hold on
just a moment,
a spark of hope
might flare

If you could see
as far as tomorrow
something worth living for
is there

If you could feel
the love around you,
that I need you
here today

If you knew

if you’d wait a moment

maybe you’d stay.

*American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

poem-a-day: wishful thinking

For today’s prompt, write a wish poem. The poem could be about making a wish or granting a wish. It could focus on the fallout from a wish granted or denied. Or think up a wishful scene to share in your poem. — Robert Lee Brewer

Wishful thinking

I’m sorting through wishes in my head.
Which are worth wishing?
And which are just trouble
masked by hope?

What if Rader were still here?
The longer it’s been, the harder it is
to know what that would be like

he’d be 18
and if he were home from college —
that is, if he went away to college,
another thing we’ll never know —
what would young adulthood have brought him?
Who would he be now?

What would be the challenges
of having him back home with us?

The wish only lets you see
the best parts.
‘Wishful thinking,’
after all,
draws its power from delusion.

I wish I knew
what it would be like
for him to still be with us

the most primal of wishes:

wish you were here.

---

Betty White reads Harry the Dirty Dog on StorylineOnline

A couple of weeks ago, when links to virtual museum tours and the like were circulating on social media, as we all tried to figure out how to occupy ourselves at home during the pandemic, I clicked on a YouTube video where Betty White was reading aloud one of my old favorite picture books, Harry the Dirty Dog, as part of a project called StorylineOnline. After watching Betty, I watched another one I have fond memories of: William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, read by Reid Scott.

Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is a wishing book, since the magic pebble Sylvester finds is a wishing pebble. I didn’t remember the plot specifically, but the climax of the book is Sylvester’s mom and dad wishing to have him back, because he’s disappeared. Watching the video and listening to the story was bittersweet for me in that sense, because I deeply understand their sorrow and longing. Since today’s theme was wishing, it seemed apropos to mention Sylvester as well.

StorylineOnline has dozens of YouTube videos. I bet some of your favorite children’s books are there as well. They’re also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

poem-a-day challenge: follow through

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Follow (blank),” replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: “Follow the Leader,” “Follow Me on Twitter,” “Follow Your Heart,” and/or “Follow the Light.” So many things to follow or not. — Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest

Follow through

When the course is set
and you know what to do,
it still takes grit
to follow through.

Even writing these words:
as I sit to compose
my brainwaves shift,
my focus goes.

But through, we know,
‘s the best way out
and following
leaves little doubt

Recall your attention
to the chosen task,
persist in your effort
is all you can ask.

If you just keep going
once you’ve begun it
following through
will ensure you’ve done it.

poem-a-day challenge: musica universalis

April is National Poetry Month. Here’s today’s Poem-A-Day Challenge prompt from Robert Lee Brewer of Writer’s Digest:

Welcome to day two of the April Poem-A-Day Challenge. Anyone can show up for one day; it’s the people who show up for the second day who are really in this challenge to get their poem on.

For today’s prompt, write a space poem. Your poem could be about outer space or inner space. It could opine on the social spacing much of the world is currently doing. Or poets can write an ode to having the space to write or read or whatever. Honestly, I’ll be disappointed if there isn’t a Star Wars or Star Trek inspired poem today. Now, I’ll back off and give everyone plenty of space to write their poems today.

image via NASA

Musica Universalis

Yesterday I met you in space.
It had been such a long time,
I was overcome with being near you

With music filling my ears
and sunlight — dappled through blowing leaves —
glowing behind my closed eyelids,
suddenly I was there

”From stardust you are made,
and to stardust you shall return.”

As the stardust of me flew
nearly light speed
through the cosmos
I sensed the stardust of you
all around me

“There you are,”
I said without words.
”This is where you went.”
And I swirled and mingled
and danced with you
through galaxies
but could not hold on.

I had to come back home.

__________

An explanation, both for you the reader, and for myself when I come back and wonder what I was talking about here. In 2020, I’m focusing on mindfulness. As a part of my grief work, I’ve committed to doing some sort of mindfulness practice daily, whether that’s yoga, guided meditation, or simply listening to soothing music and being present in the moment.

Yesterday, I opened up the meditation-focused app Insight Timer, and chose a piece of music to listen to called Cosmic Flow | Delta Brainwave System by Insight Timer contributor Patrick Lynen. I believe I had listened to it once before, but this time it had an incredible effect on me. I have a yoga bolster, which is basically a big cylindrical cushion, and I sat at one end and laid back until the back of my neck rested at the other end with my head draped over. The sun was shining through the big tree out front into my plant room, where I like to do my mindfulness exercises, and I closed my eyes, while beams of sunlight danced across my face. Suddenly the music and the lights transported me, and I could imagine the stardust atoms of Rader swirling around the stardust atoms of me. It was such a compelling visual, and the deepest desire of my heart, I just got completely swept away with it.

Musica universalis, the music of the spheres, is not actual, audible music. [According to Wikipedia, “The musica universalis (literally universal music), also called music of the spheres or harmony of the spheres, is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies—the Sun, Moon, and planets—as a form of music. This ‘music’ is not thought to be audible, but rather a harmonic, mathematical or religious concept.”] But I felt the term captured my experience.

national poetry month kicks off — it's a new world

April is National Poetry Month! This gorgeous commemorative poster is from poets.org by student poster contest winner Samantha Aikman, based on the poem “Remember” by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.
✏️
So 2020 will be my third year celebrating by writing a poem a day based on prompts from Robert Lee Brewer, senior editor with Writer's Digest. Today’s prompt was to write a new world poem.
✏️
Trees burst into leaf
Seemingly overnight
At the very moment of the equinox
Early on the calendar because of leap year
•
Birds are singing their heads off
Building nests
Including in places we don’t want them
Laying eggs there in the bush by the front doorway
Did I scare them away when I got a step stool and looked in the nest?
I didn’t mean for them to abandon their eggs
I could have used a different door
To leave the house for a while
It’s not as if I’m leaving the house much
Anyway
•
Parts of nature are
Proceeding as usual
And then parts of nature
Are doing things they’ve never done
And I don’t know how to feel about it
And I don’t know what to do about it
•
So I stay home
And I wash hands
And I sew masks
And I try not to dwell
On the fact that every day
My other half
Goes to his “essential” job
Where some days he’s at his office
Mostly seeing patients by telehealth,
But others, like today, he’s at the hospital
And we are pretty sure
That one day, maybe even today,
He’ll come home with this virus
And I’ll get it too
•
So we don’t see our moms
And our kid stays away at school
And we hope for the best
•
And in some ways I wish
That we could just have it and get it over with,
But it might hit us hard
Even though we are youngish and healthy
•
The world has never seen this before
And you just never know
•
You never know
❤️
💙
💛

Also I wanted to add that the "new world poem" prompt made me think of a song I love by Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas. It's a song that feels very optimistic to me. Check it out here. And while I was looking for that, I found a version from a year later by Nina Simone, still beautiful, but much more apocalyptic in tone. Do yourself a favor and listen to both. Which resonates more with you?

mixed feelings about "I Want You to be Happy" Day

Today's made-up holiday, according to the websites that keep track of such things, is I Want You to be Happy Day.

National Day Calendar, which is my main source for finding out about such 'holidays,' does concede in their description that "we are not individually responsible for others' happiness." True, and a good reminder.

Weeks back when I first saw the announcement about this day, and penciled it onto my calendar in case I wanted to post about it, I realized I made note of it because of Rader.

There's a saying in parenting: "You're only as happy as your unhappiest child." (There's another saying you may have heard, especially if you're in the South: "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.") If you consider those things together, your unhappy child is now responsible for putting happiness out of reach for your entire family. That responsibility would be far too much for any child to carry. The more reasonable conclusion is that both statements are fallacy.

Each of us has a unique innate disposition that falls along a spectrum. Me, I'm ruthlessly, obnoxiously optimistic. I had to learn how not to "bright side" people with my irrepressible belief that things will always work out. It turns out that folks need space to express how they feel without someone downplaying the awfulness of whatever it is that's disturbing them. To paraphrase the author of a relationship book my husband and I read early in marriage, sometimes they need your shoulder, not your mouth.

As an optimist, I have a generally "happier" outlook than people whose natural bent is in the other direction. I'm in a group on Facebook of moms of "glass half empty" kids. We've talked about this kind of thing a lot.

Here's the truth: you can't MAKE someone else happy. Not your child; not your partner. You don't have that kind of control over other people. And another truth: sometimes you can't even make yourself happy. Feeling happiness, joy, hope — there are times those things are out of reach. But another thing I know (and this is not just my silver-lining-ness talking — it's backed up by the AFSP) if you are in a place that's dark, better times are coming. If you can just hold on, that overwhelming feeling will pass, and you'll begin to be able to see a little light again.

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention says, regarding suicidal crisis and access to lethal means, "Remember: those who don’t have immediate access to a means of killing themselves don’t simply find another way. Most live through it and regain their usual ways of coping. Removing access to firearms and all other lethal means and providing support helps get people past the intense, temporary moment of suicidal crisis … and can save a life."

I wanted Rader to be happy. As his mom in those last months of his life, I expended a bunch of emotional energy all the time just trying to get him to the point of comfortable, well short of happy. The things I tried weren't enough. And so he never had a chance to find out that what his brain was telling him — that life would always be just as intolerable as it felt when he could see no way through — was a lie. According to a study published by Cambridge University Press and cited by Mental Health America, nine of out ten people who attempt suicide and survive do not go on to die by suicide at a later date.

So, then, back to today. Happy "I Want You to be Happy Day!" I do want you to be happy. I hope you have a plan of self care that helps build up your reserves, so you're better equipped to face challenges when they come. If you're struggling with depression or have had thoughts of suicide, I implore you to make a safety plan that you can fall back on if you reach a crisis point. This can be as basic as downloading the NotOKApp and following the simple setup. Then when you need help, just push a button on your phone, and messages will be sent to trusted contacts you have chosen, to come support you (it even sends them your location information). You are worth it. Your life has so much value. I'm glad you're still here on I Want You to be Happy Day. And I want you to be here tomorrow.

half-hearted

February 11, 2020

As I read the introduction below (from about two years ago, shortly after my daily writing course ended), I have a couple of reactions. 1. I took a long break this fall from daily writing, but I’m glad to be back at it now. 2. I still like the idea of posting a piece of writing weekly, but since I haven’t been doing it on any kind of regular schedule at all, I think maybe once or twice a month is a better place to start without putting too much pressure on myself.

Also, this piece is the last of the ones I had saved in my “drafts” folder for future posts. So now I’d really better write some new stuff!

February 22, 2018

My grief writing course has ended, but I still am writing every day. I decided I'd like to publish something for you all to read, maybe weekly? I haven't set myself a firm schedule yet. But here's today's.
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There's a twice-monthly podcast called Criminal, hosted by Phoebe Judge and published out of Durham, N.C. A recent episode, "The Mothers," follows three women who belong to an organization called Parents of Murdered Children. The women speak poignantly about how hard it is for them to relate to others, even including other parents who have lost children, because losing a child to an act of violence is a vastly different loss from other kinds — from illness or from accident.

Joslin Simms, one of the women interviewed, said this: "If something like that happens, your whole life changes. People look at you and say, 'You've got other kids; you'll be all right.' They don't understand. It doesn't matter how many children you have. I had four sons. And I tell people now, I've only got three-fourths of a heart. Because my other fourth is gone."

I had two children; now I have one. My lost child wasn't murdered, but died by suicide. No lingering illness. No senseless accident. Still gone. And I am left half-hearted.

Without a thought, we use the term half-hearted: lacking heart, spirit, or interest. It's always figurative. Never literal. Of course Joslin isn't using it literally either, but it's also not quite figurative. The loss of a child's life to violence — whether an act perpetrated upon them, or violence by their own hands — sends the parent into a shadow place where the literal and the figurative lose their sharp outlines, and where it is possible to live with half a heart.

We are capable of a lot. A friend wrote to me today, "I believe that under the same circumstances I may not come out the other side in one piece. It’s impossible to say, of course ..." She's right. We just don't know what we can do until we must. But the will to live is strong. And so with half a heart, I press on.

It makes you think, though, about the insidiousness of suicide. I'm reading a beautiful book, "Melissa: A Father's Lessons from a Daughter's Suicide" by Frank Page, given to me by another friend. Dr. Page is a Baptist minister who happened to have been living in my local area a few years ago when he and his wife lost their young adult daughter, the oldest of three girls. In the chapter entitled "Drugs and Depression," he begins this way.

"Things we don't completely understand: Suicide. Every inclination in the human mind is to preserve one's own life. You graze against a hot bulb while you're cleaning the light fixtures in your bathroom, and you yank your hand away. Pure reflex. You stumble walking down a flight of stairs, and you grab the handrail, you attempt to correct, anything to keep from completely losing your balance. ... But suicide? It makes no sense to the thinking mind. It goes against nature and impulse. Only in one's utter desperation is this anomaly able somehow to contort itself into a shape that fits on the same grid with normal life processes. Otherwise, it's something we would always run away from, never toward. Suicide is hard to understand." (p. 101-102)

Because the will to live is strong. Life finds a way, as they say in Jurassic Park. And so with half a heart, I stumble on. I read; I write. I bake; I eat. I walk in the warm sun, or even in the rain. I spend time with friends and family; I spend time alone. I choose to do more of what makes me feel alive, and actively avoid the things that feel oppressive. Sometimes the need to do good overrides the preference I might otherwise have about doing that thing, and even then it turns out to feed my soul. (For example, I missed a meeting of my Navigating Change yoga therapy group to take my mother-in-law to a funeral for her long-time friend and neighbor's husband. It was without a doubt the right choice: for her, her friend, and so for me. I'm so glad I did it.)

With half a heart, I move on. I will never "move on" from Rader, of course. I'll never "get over" my grief. That half of my heart isn't going to grow back like the leg of a starfish or the tail of a lizard. (According to National Geographic, the adorable Mexican axolotl can regenerate nearly any part of its body. But that's a story for another time.) I keep moving. I do the work of grief. I take the grief that is inside me, that boundless love that has lost its object, and bit by bit I move it to the outside. I cry out tears. I write out words. I create loaves of bread, works of art, care packages, projects. With half a heart, but not half-heartedly.

because i love me

Following a prompt (something along the lines of “because I love me/how does love see me/what blessing would I wish for myself”) from Megan Devine’s Writing Your Grief program, I wrote this essay almost two years ago from when I’m posting it. Afterward I did buy both the t-shirts I talk about in the third paragraph, and a new office chair.

Shirt design by Walmazan at Woot.

February 6, 2018

"Because I love me, ..."

I sit at the computer desk, in the old padded office chair that is far more comfortable since I went after it with a screwdriver the other day to reattach the parts that had come loose. I still probably need a new chair, and I'll have to go sit in a bunch of them to try them out, because I am absolutely the Princess and the Pea when it comes to seating. I'm only 5'2", so chairs made for average-size people generally leave my feet dangling above the floor. And also I like a really good lumbar support.

So I sit here, and as I glance down toward my left, I see a tiny slip of paper there, a rectangle fraction of an inch, with a word on it: "seem". A remnant of a writing exercise from a few days ago, where I went back in time, selected an earlier essay I had composed, and cut it up into pieces. To rearrange my own words and see what else I had to say.

Rader wrote in a 4th-grade school assignment that he'd like to see the future in a time machine. There's a t-shirt I have saved on the website of one of those companies that prints them with a bunch of nerdy sayings. It uses the Back to the Future font and colors, and says "I'm traveling to the future at regular speed." I've been looking at it for months. I should go ahead and just order it. That and the one with the chicken on it I would have gotten him for Christmas. If something like that makes me feel a little bit closer to him, I should just do it.

Because I love me, I write. There's a scene at the end of The Breakfast Club, which came out at the exact right time in my life: 1985, the middle of high school. I so wanted to be Molly Ringwald, "Claire," the princess. But who I really identified with was Anthony Michael Hall, "Brian," the brain. When he finishes writing the one-paragraph paper he's composed for all five kids in Saturday detention (each was supposed to write their own, but they talked him into it because clearly he's the best equipped to do such a thing), he reads it back, and gives himself a little "well done!" punch on the arm. I feel that "well done" when I write. Not every time, but often enough. I know I'm doing good work, and I can bask at least briefly in the glow of self satisfaction, because I love me. Success for me in writing sometimes means poetic. Sometimes it means raw and real. Sometimes it means I've expressed something I hadn't understood before. Sometimes I write something wise.

How does love see me? I think love sees the truth: that overall I have it pretty much together, but sometimes I'm lost. I have an innate self confidence — so sure, it's almost alarming — but sometimes still I'm insecure. Love embraces those contradictions and meets me where I'm at every time. Love knows I expect so much from myself and counters that expectation with grace. Love knows I want to do things "right" and patiently keeps reminding me that with grief there is no right way. Love allows me to stay in my pajamas if I don't have anywhere to be, and play a few rounds — or sometimes hours — of a silly match-3 app on my iPad, and leave up my Christmas tree into the month of February, because none of those things is doing any real harm.

A blessing for myself:

I'd like to say 'that the road would be easy' or smooth or straight, but it won't. So when it isn't, I wish for myself the energy to keep going, the companionship of friends along the way, the strength to try again when I fail, and the keenness to recognize and appreciate whatever small gifts appear to help me on the journey.

how can i possibly write?

I haven’t been writing much lately. Well, I’ve been journaling, but not doing ‘serious writing.’ There are some pieces I wrote during my first session of Megan Devine’s Writing Your Grief that I haven’t published here, so I’ll do that over the next few days. As a bonus, this essay reminds me of the benefits of getting back to writing.

February 5, 2018

Today we were supposed to confront the reality that we are writing because someone has died. Below is a summary of the prompt.

"These are not just words. How can I possibly write? What is the story of the story I'm in?"
_____

Writing feels like my first language. I know that's an odd way of looking at it, as I both write and speak in English! (And in fact it's my only language. Whatever I learned in high school Spanish doesn't count.) But anyway, I feel so much more fluent with a pencil in my hand or seated at a keyboard than speaking. When I'm talking, my tone of voice may betray me. I've been told sometimes I unintentionally come across as annoyed or defensive or mean. My words may not say what I intend to say. When I write, I can go back and check before anyone ever sees it. I can make sure I'm communicating what I mean to.

And so how can I not write? This is how my heart tells me what I feel, how my brain tells me what I think. I put my hands to the keys and it just comes out.

In the middle of a very good life, something terrible, but sadly also common, happened to me: my beloved son died by suicide. I write because this is my reality. This is my truth. And a lot of other people need to know about it. Some of them need to know that if it happens to you, if you lose a child, it's survivable. And that grief comes in as many forms as there are grieving people, and so to walk softly. Some of them need to know that if it happens to someone you care about, not talking to them about the person they've lost doesn't mean they'll hurt less; in fact, you're hurting them more. Some of them need to know that if they're considering suicide as an answer to their problems, if you think that just not living anymore will solve everything, it's a lie. It's like a bomb going off that devastates everything and everyone in its vicinity. So I write. And me, there are things I need to know as well. So I write.

why are young americans killing themselves?

"The good news is that we don’t have to wait for all the answers to know what to do. … We just need to do a better job of identifying, reaching out to and providing resources for at-risk youths." — Richard A. Friedman

"The good news is that we don’t have to wait for all the answers to know what to do. … We just need to do a better job of identifying, reaching out to and providing resources for at-risk youths." — Richard A. Friedman (@raf_ideas) https://t.co/wSbPQfMShR #suicideprevention

— Rader Ward Foundation (@RaderWardFound) January 8, 2020

I agree with the points Friedman makes in his opinion piece. We can and should work toward making the changes he advocates, and could save a lot of lives. The sobering part to me, though, is that I know even implementing all those changes can't reach every struggling kid.

The article says only 33 percent of boys with depression received treatment in 2019. Rader, in 2017, was indeed being treated for depression, seen by a pediatrician, counselors, and a psychiatrist. It cites the possible influence of smart phones and cyberbullying. Rader wasn't using a smart phone and was not active on social media. It mentions that the black box warning on antidepressants led to fewer prescriptions for teenagers than perhaps are needed. But Rader was taking a prescription antidepressant.

Friedman's conclusion: "To start, we need a major public campaign to educate parents and teachers to recognize depression in young people and to learn about the warning signs of suicide — like a sudden change in behavior, talking or writing about suicide, and giving away prized possessions. We should have universal screening of teenagers at school, with parental consent, to identify those who are suffering from depression and who are at risk of suicide. And we have to provide adequate funding and resources to match the mental health needs of our young people."

I agree that increasing knowledge among parents and teachers about suicide and its warning signs will save lives. I wonder if it could have saved Rader. I fully support universal screening at school, and increasing funding and resources to meet our teens' mental health needs. I'm going to keep working to get the word out.

So when you read something here on the website or on my social media that resonates with you, please share it. It could make a life-or-death difference to someone.

better, worse, and good enough

I decorated my Christmas tree yesterday. It's been up for weeks. It's artificial, and pre-lit. We have a two-story living room, and so years ago I decided I always wanted a really tall tree. It's easier (and costs less in the long run) to just buy one big fake tree than to try to find a 12' live tree every year, and then have to string it with lights. (I like a LOT of lights). I decided on purpose I wanted to put it up this year. (Last year, we just put up a small tree.) But then once it was up, I found myself kind of paralyzed about putting ornaments on it.

If you follow my foundation social media, you'll know I listen to and then pass along a lot of advice from mental health and grief experts. One key piece of advice I've definitely repeated this season (from Megan Devine of Refuge in Grief) is to do more of the things that make you feel better, and less of the things that make you feel worse. My original decision to put up the tree was because I thought it would make me feel better, that I would enjoy looking at it once it was done, and even enjoy hanging the ornaments on it. Of course a lot of those have memories attached to them.

And so as it turned out, decorating the tree made me feel both better and worse. We weren't as careful with the alignment of the different sections of the tree as it went up, and so there were some spots in the structure of it that looked bare, where branches weren't offset to fill the gaps the way they should have. So I thought, maybe we should try to do something about that before I hang all the ornaments. But then it's so heavy, there's not really a good way to fix it now that it's all fully assembled. Or what if the problem is that something got bent, or it's just wearing out and showing its years? My brain just went around and around, and the ornaments just sat there in boxes, as the days went by. I was disturbed by it. And then I was disturbed about being disturbed. And I couldn't move forward.

My husband gave me the option yesterday of just taking it down. Which was a sweet offer, since he could see how much it had been bothering me. But it's a hassle to assemble, and it was already put together, and there was still a part of me that thought it would ultimately be something that would add to my enjoyment of the holiday season.

As a recovering perfectionist, something I purposefully work on is the concept of "good enough." I choose to accept that whatever it is — this time, a Christmas tree with gaps in its silhouette — is good enough. And so (not saying there weren't tears shed over it) I went ahead. I closed the curtains behind it so the light from the window wouldn't shine through the gaps so brightly. And I covered it with ornaments: all my recent favorites, like the one from Hamilton, and the ones from our trips in the past couple years to the Grand Canyon and out to visit relatives in California; all the Hallmark Snow Buddies we've been collecting since 1998; a long-beloved wooden salmon and polar bear; a string of glass fish. We haven't gotten the big ladder out, so we couldn't reach to put the angel on top, and it's mostly bare of ornaments up there, too. But you know what? It's good enough.

I might have suspected this already, and I even said it above, but what I've learned for sure from decorating my Christmas tree this year is that sometimes the exact same thing can make you feel both better and worse. Life is hardly ever simple. Sometimes you make a decision and then you find it's best for you to change your mind even if it's inconvenient. Sometimes the momentum just carries you along and you muddle through. Take care of yourself this holiday season. Yourself and the ones you love. Remember you have agency to make the decisions that are best for you, and even to backtrack on them if you figure out that what's best now isn't the same as what it was when you first decided. Have grace. And I wish you all the joy that's possible for you right now. Merry Christmas.

In memory of Adelaide Grace Cervantes, 2015-2019

"There are moments that the words don't reach. There is suffering too terrible to name. You hold your child as tight as you can and push away the unimaginable. The moments when you're in so deep it feels easier to just swim down. The Hamiltons move uptown and learn to live with the unimaginable."

— Lin-Manuel Miranda, It's Quiet Uptown, from Hamilton

I've written about "It's Quiet Uptown" before. It's a song that reaches so deeply into the horror of losing a child, it's hard to believe it sprung from Lin-Manuel Miranda's imagination and empathy rather than real-life experience. He has kids now but his first wasn't even born yet when he wrote this song.

The show premiered off Broadway early in 2015 and the cast recording was released that year. I don't recall exactly when our family became aware of it. But by early 2017, the desire to see Hamilton dictated our Spring Break plans. With our oldest getting ready to graduate high school, it would be the last time for a while we'd all be on the same break schedule.

We planned a trip to Chicago, which has its own production of Hamilton. Family favorite actor Wayne Brady, of Whose Line Is It Anyway, was finishing up a short run as Aaron Burr, a fact that pushed us over the edge. We got tickets for his penultimate performance.

In April 2017, the four of us started off a memorable week in Chicago finally seeing this much anticipated show. We ate deep dish pizza. We figured out how to go where we wanted on the "L." We saw the giant mirrored outdoor sculpture lovingly called "the bean." We went to Navy Pier and took a water taxi over to the museums. We checked out the view from 360Chicago at the top of the John Hancock Center, one of the tallest buildings in the city. We had a great time! And two months later, Rader took his own life. Unimaginable.

My husband and I have been back to Chicago two more times to see Hamilton. We've not yet been to NYC. So actor Miguel Cervantes is 'our' Alexander Hamilton. He originated the role in Chicago and played it all three times we went. He's been singing that song almost daily for years now. Once to our whole family. And William and I clung to one another's hands and wept while he sang it two more times to us, as if we and our unimaginable loss were alone in the theater.

This past weekend, he and his wife, Kelly, lost their daughter, Adelaide Grace, to a neurodegenerative disorder that struck her in infancy. She was almost four years old. She's also survived by her brother, Jackson, age 7. Miguel has stepped away from the role of Hamilton for an unspecified period of time, but said in a statement to People magazine that he would return soon.

There are moments that the words don't reach. I have nothing profound to say to Miguel and the Cervantes family as they are going through the unimaginable. Other than, I see you. I feel for you. As your work helped me in the darkness of my loss, I hope you, too, find yourself enveloped in a grace too powerful to name.

---

Kelly writes a beautiful blog called Inchstones, available here.

how would you love me?

Another essay from my first session of Writing Your Grief. Check out Refuge In Grief for “grief support that doesn’t suck.”

January 30, 2018

Today's prompt was to free-write about how our loved one would care for us or tend to us in our pain, if they were here.

"How would you love me in this?
If I imagine you speaking, imagine you loving me through this, you would tell me ..."
__________

Starting off, this seems like a tricky one. I know you loved me. But you weren't very demonstrative. You would tolerate a hug if I asked for and initiated it. You would respond to a hand reached out in your direction with some type of fist bump analog (remembering that the Korean masters at tae kwon do used to perform elaborate fist-bump followups, such as the retreating squid), or the touch of a fingertip, E.T.-style, although I don't think you were familiar enough with E.T. to know that's what it resembled. How would you love me in this?

Maybe you would make me something. It wasn't a frequent occurrence, but occasionally you would create something intended as a gift. A Christmas-themed board game made up of paper pieces with a tag that says "To: mommy and daddy." A Mother's Day card for me, certainly made by assignment at school, because most of what you created spontaneously was for your own amusement. Maybe you would make me something to show you were thinking of me.

If I imagine you speaking, imagine you loving me through this, you would tell me ... I don't know. Earlier in the school year, during one of our car rides, we talked about your struggles and my worries. Or rather, I talked about it. It's not like we were having back-and-forth conversations about what was going on with you. You were so emphatic that I should stop worrying about you. "I'm fine, it's fine, everything's fine!" you said, when you couldn't stand my clumsy attempts to get you to open up, my too-intrusive expressions of concern, any longer. So what would you say now? Would you still tell me you're fine?

We became more concerned about you through the winter. Grades came out in January, and we put you on restriction from the computer and Wii and iPod because of the C in Spanish. I thought you just needed motivation to try harder. I took you to a counselor. You had always made A's and B's putting forth literally no effort. Why couldn't you push yourself a tiny bit to do better in Spanish so you could get back your gaming time? The restriction backfired spectacularly. I made a chart of things you could do to earn time on your devices. But nothing was worth it. Not driving practice. Not reading something. Not chores. You retreated to your room and slept.

The counselor suggested that the pediatrician refer you for psychological testing. Maybe your quirky genius thing was autism? No, that wasn't it, but the psychologist recommended we go ahead with antidepressants, diagnosing you with depression and social anxiety. The pediatrician had wanted to hold off on meds until after the testing.

You started on antidepressants in March and I talked to you frankly about the black box warning. That most people, the medicine helped. But for a small percentage of young people, it could cause suicidal thoughts. And if that started to happen, that you should know it was just the medicine, just the chemicals in your brain, and you should come talk to us about it, and we'd fix it. We set up an appointment with the psychiatrist.

At some point, recognizing the futility, we lifted the computer restriction. We had never had such a complete failure in parenting philosophy. For weeks after you started the Lexapro, we didn't leave you alone at all. And after the first month, you said you didn't feel like it was doing anything. But by the time we got you in with the psychiatrist, you said maybe it was helping a little bit after all. He said we could raise the dose, and that you were probably still safe with a little less supervision.

In the meantime, I was scrambling through the bureaucratic obstacle course of getting accommodations for you at school, a 504 plan. We considered withdrawing you for medical homebound school, but were advised that kids with social anxiety found it very stressful to reintegrate, and it might be better to just ride out the remaining few weeks of the school year.

I sent emails to all your teachers and met with the guidance counselor and administrators. Concurrently, I explored the option of a technology-focused charter school. Maybe a smaller, more supportive environment would fix things for you, would be more like the Montessori method you thrived in through fifth grade. I visited a couple of times, took a tour, and finally brought you to an open house. You agreed to try it and I completed all the paperwork for you to transfer and begin 11th grade there in the fall. I asked you if you thought you'd keep in touch with anyone from your regular high school, and you said no. After you were gone, I found out how important you were to Will and to Hunter. Here I thought you were looking for connection, and you had it. Did you not value that after all? Or did I just catch you with that question at a bad time?

We thought school getting out would lift some of the darkness from you. How could it not? Our initial worry subsiding, we had begun to give you more freedom. But I continued my protocol of checking in with you before I would leave the house, telling you where I would be, that you could always reach me on my cell, where everyone else in the family was, and when we would be back. Asking if it was OK for me to go, if you were OK. What I was asking was were you going to harm yourself. And just like months earlier in the car, you always told me you were OK, you were fine. Even that last night, when you weren't.

All this to say, I know you loved me. I believe you loved me more than you loved anyone else. That I was your favorite person. But I don't know how you would love me in this. I can't imagine you speaking here. And I guess probably both of us are sorry about that.

-------------
An afterword here, I want to say we really have no idea if the antidepressants had anything to do with Rader's suicide, and I don't mean to imply such a thing. I don't blame anyone or anything but his depression.

remembering and forgetting

It has been months since I’ve posted a piece of writing. My counselor asked me this week if I still was writing, and I said yes, in general, but not so much actively, at the moment. I’ve continued to type out some thoughts daily, on a site that keeps track for me, and then I inadvertently missed a day last Wednesday, wrote again Thursday, and realized on Friday that I had forgotten a day and broken my streak of a couple hundred days. I took that as an opportunity, then, to take a break, and here I am. But I still have some of the pieces I wrote for my original session of Writing Your Grief that I meant to post here and never did. So here’s one, and there are at least four more to come, and I have a backlog of additional writing prompts from Megan Devine when I’m ready to start again. Which I think I am, if not every day ready to write about something deep and thoughtful, at least some days.

January 26, 2018

The prompt was to write about things we remember or want to remember, and/or things we want to forget. (Disclaimer: Memory is a tricky thing, so the details as I recall them may not match up to what others remember of the same experiences I describe.)

Photo from the 2012 camping trip. Rader is second from right in the Mario shirt with the walkie-talkie on.

I remember that I was nervous when the ultrasound showed we were having a boy. I grew up with just a sister, and my mother grew up with just a sister. I didn't know about boys. The boy moms I knew, moms of my friends growing up, were the ones who went prematurely gray. Which made the point to me that boys are difficult.

I remember I was terrified when, at only a few days of age, my son was readmitted to the hospital where he was born, because he had developed a fever. Fevers in babies can be serious, as their immune systems are mostly undeveloped. They did tests to try to figure out what was causing the fever and rule out what wasn't; sepsis is what I remember them wanting to rule out. I remember they did a lumbar puncture — a spinal tap — and my husband, who as an internal medicine resident was not far removed from his own medical training, was more worried than I, knowing what it all meant and what kinds of things could go wrong. I remember he was brought to tears by the possibility of an air bubble in the IV line, because bubbles don't belong in the bloodstream. As a parent of a child in the hospital, he knew too much for his own good.

I remember when your six-day-old baby is in the Children's Hospital, even when he's full-term and born healthy, even when he's not in the NICU, you think he's going to die, and it's so scary. Because what if you have to go home without your baby? How do you live with an empty crib in a nursery you decorated yourself, with curtains and bumper pads and a bed skirt you sewed for him?

I remember we brought him back home again on my 32nd birthday, when he was eight days old. Was it only two days in the hospital? I remember it feeling much longer.

I remember two times I couldn't find my little boy. Once was when he was a toddler, and we were getting into the car right outside our house. Somehow I lost sight of him, the car being between us, and for whatever reason he didn't answer when I called his name. I remember the sick feeling of imagining him being lost.

The second time was on a camping trip with friends. We were in a campground with a network of trails, and he went bike-riding with his two younger friends, brothers Alex and Tom. They were maybe 10, 9, and 8. Rader wasn't interested in bike riding and didn't ever own a bike, so had borrowed one. Somewhere on the trails, he either lost track of or couldn't keep up with Tom and Alex, and they came back without him. The moms immediately went into a panic (me most of all, of course). Earlier we had seen a pickup truck driving around. Had he been abducted? Again, I remember the horrifying feeling of imagining having to go home without him.

What I don't remember is what happened next; it's all a fog. Did we get the campground to seal off the exits? Did the dads go out in search of him? All I know is he came back, and the panic subsided, and we were OK.

I remember another time, but there was no panic. We were visiting London with the same friends, three summers later. Matt was 15; Rader 13, Alex 12, and Tom 11. I don't remember specifically where we were going or returning from, but the kids and parents lost each other on the tube. I think the parents made it onto the train and the kids got left on the platform. But we had been successfully navigating the tube system for days, and we had even talked about what to do if we got separated. I think the plan was that whomever was on the train would get off at the next station and wait for the others to catch up. It worked perfectly, and the incident is barely a footnote in a trip full of great stories. I remember feeling they were old enough and sophisticated enough that we didn't need to worry.

This is a chronicle of the times I thought I could lose my child, my son. These are the stories of all the times, except the one when I actually did.

[Postscript: I’ve been reminded since I wrote this that we actually lost him one other time, at an air show in Anchorage, Alaska, after a family cruise.]