So, I last talked about trying to cope with death and it makes me wonder how well I've really done myself. Listening to this song, "You Will Make It Through" by Jem and it says:
Go to bed everything's alright
Don't know the whole world's changing
As you sleep through the night
Wake up slowly and it's a different world
Hear the news and the floods begin
Screams so loud but only felt within
Heart is shattered
The pieces can't be found
I feel your pain, I wrote this song for you, for you
You will make it, you will make it through
I promise you, he would want you to
Months go by, still living in a daze
Don't know what you've done
With the last seven days
Soul is numb and life is like a dream
Helping hands but you push them away
How could they understand
Don't wanna share your pain
Afraid to heal, 'cause that would be goodbye
I feel your pain, I wrote this song for you, for you
You will make it, you will make it through
I promise you, she would want you to
One day sunlight hits a photograph
And it makes you smile
The memories dance around you now
And they make you smile
You're not alone
You'll never be
Just like the stars
They oversee
And
they whisper to you
You're still, you're still,
You're still, you're still alive
I feel your pain, I wrote this song for you, for you
You will make it, you will make it through
I promise you, they would want you to
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints on snow
I am the sun on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there; I did not die
The last part is the poem I had added to my Dad's funeral cards. I put some of my favorite parts in bold. "Afraid to heal, 'cause that would be goodbye" that specifically struck me hard because it feels so true in regards to my Dad. I've been thinking about him alot being that my son just turned two and he wasn't here to see it.
It pains me to think how close he was to meeting my son. He died in `06 and my son was born in `07. I know it's not good to dwell on what can never be and yet at night, when I'm up alone, I let my mind go to those places. I try to play computer games and work on my blogs to keep my mind busy enough that I don't get down, but when I lay my head on the pillow, there's no distractions. I lie awake and wonder why, what if..., how could this happen to me and all of the other things that go along with that way of thinking. It's impossible to imagine if you haven't experienced a close death.
Having said that, I believe the positive message of the song as well, that we will make it through and that our loved ones would want us to. It's just so much harder than I could have ever imagined. I may have said it before, but I often feel like I need my dad here to help me through his death.
When faced with death upon death, it's hard not to question why, why people have to go and why there has to be so much suffering, but it's just like child birth. There's so much pain, but then the baby's out and there's joy. Once in Heaven, there's only peace.
There's a poem that says "death is our wedding with eternity" and I like that because it's like a beginning instead of an end.
Here is that poem by Rumi:
Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? "God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
It's funny, after so many years of no one wanting anything to do with Michael Jackson; in his death he has been resurrected, in a sense. Now, he is the world's "King of Pop" once more. I actually understand this phenomenon because after losing my father, it seemed like all the negative things that surrounded his life didn't matter anymore. People only say nice things now. Even his ex-wife, who hated him in life, came to his funeral bawling. I say it's funny because I don't know what else to call it. Death definitely makes you look at life differently. All the things that seemed so important are put into perspective I guess.
The media, however, has no soul and thus they won't be satisfied until they've tarnished everything good about Michael Jackson... yet again. Why they need to dredge up his drug use, I don't know. He's dead and finding out why won't bring him back. Sure, maybe the doctors are responsible, but in this society, where the rich and famous live by different rules, we all know he would have gotten what he wanted from someone. If it was drugs, it was a choice he made. A mistake that he has paid for.
Why can't we let this man alone, at least in death because we sure didn't in life.
Honestly, I am sincerely heartbroken over the loss of Michael Jackson last week. I have been a big fan my whole life. I realize that people younger than I am may not understand why, but there was a time when nothing nor no one was bigger than Michael Jackson. He was an icon, an inspiration and I idolized him.
Now, I know everyone and their mom is talking about his death right now and maybe people are already sick of hearing about it. Well, this isn't that kind of post. Yes, I was a huge fan and could go on for days about it, but it's not the whole reason I'm writing.
I'm writing to address some of the negativity surrounding his life. While I can't pretend to know what it feels like to be famous, let alone since childhood, with your every move followed and analyzed, I'm going to give it a try. You see, I think his family and my family (specifically one side of my family) are similar in that they were both screwed up. If my family had been thrust into the spotlight, it wouldn't have meant our problems would go away. Fame and money, no matter what people think, don't equal mental health and happiness.
So, there we'd be, my family and all our flaws exposed. That's just the flaws he came into fame with. Once fame had it's way with him, he didn't have a chance. No artist today, even as crazy as it is now, can know what Michael went through in the height of his fame. It was a different time, he was more popular, more talented than artists today. He was my generations Elvis only, unlike Elvis, he'd never known anything else. He'd been famous as a young child, everyone wanted a piece of him.
Are we then surprised he was strange? Man, how we loved his originality when he was pumping out records.
Today, is my father's b-day. Next month, it will be two years since he's been gone. Immediately after, I could have sworn it would never get better. I didn't know how people went on with their lives after losing someone so close. I didn't care about anything else. I would go out in public and breakdown and I didn't care who saw me. It was like I was in my own world.
I remember it took me about five months before I was able to talk about him without crying. I could even laugh at old stories of him. Still, the first year was definitely the hardest. I had a hard time accepting the idea that he wasn't coming back. I'd have thoughts like "I need to tell Dad that' or "I should call Dad". Once I even thought I saw him, I mean really saw him. It's when the reality hits that you can't call or that it's just a stranger who resembles him, that's the hardest part.
Now, I still think of him everyday and I know I will continue to for the rest of my life. Though the pain is there, it has dulled. Just like they say, time heals all. Of course, just because the wound has healed doesn't mean that it doesn't still hurt or that there aren't scars.
I hope that this helps those who are grieving. I know that after I lost my dad, I wanted to know that I wasn't alone and I needed to know what to expect. I guess I needed hope that things would get better and I'm here to tell you that they do. Just hang in there.
At the end of May, it will have been 2 years since my father passed. A year before that my grandmother had passed. It was at that same time that my grandmother was sick that my father fell ill, but we were so concerned with my grandmother dying that we didn't give my dad the attention that he needed. The doctors were just telling us my dad had a pneumonia. We had no idea how serious it was.
Four months later, we learned it was actually cancer. All I could think was that I hoped his heart was strong enough for him to have it removed because he'd had 3 heart attacks. The reality of it was that, by the time they found it, the cancer had spread throughout his body and there would be no removal. In fact, he was so far along that the doctors didn't even suggest chemo. I had never felt so helpless.
Still, I had great hope. I spoke to my dad about the blessings in his life. I told him that all we learned was that he wouldn't live forever and we knew that, but that he could have years left. I prayed every night and I visualized the cancer leaving his body. I actually convinced myself that if anyone could fight it, it would be my dad. He was, after all, the strongest person I know. In my mind he was invincible.
It was just as I'd learned with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' 5 Stages of grief. After denial, there was an anger in me like nothing I'd experienced. I tried desperately to channel those feelings into something positive. I started painting my basement. We had planned on completely re-doing the walls before painting and so it wasn't a good idea and I knew it. I just needed to keep busy, to keep my mind off of what was happening. One day my husband questioned why I was doing it, and it sent me into an utter rage. I didn't want to tell him why. I didn't want to talk about it at all.
Bargaining came next. Once you realize the reality of the situation, there's a desperation. You start offering anything you can to try and persuade God to change the inevitable. It's a sad state of being. A different kind of sad than the next stage, "depression". Depression makes the most sense given the situation.
Acceptance, now that's the hard one. I'm still working on that one.
My Grandfather died when I was 9. A year later, my grandmother followed. Those were my first experiences with loss. It felt like a huge thing at the time. Then, in my teen years, I lost two friends and my half brother all on separate occasions. It made a hard and confusing time in my life even harder and more confusing.
However, nothing compares to the pain of losing my father. He was the planet around which my life orbited. After I lost him, I fell apart. I told my husband that if our life together was a plant, it would die because I couldn't water it at that time. So, my husband started bringing me cacti. That's the type of man my husband is.
After four months, he became so concerned about me that he asked me to go talk to someone and I did. A third therapist, another woman, supposedly specializing in grief counseling. First thing she did was ask me to write my father a letter talking to him about any unresolved issues. Well, that was fine and good but when my father died, it was of cancer and not a heart attack like we'd all prepared ourselves for. So, my dad actually had nine months before he passed and we'd said everything we needed to. Still, I wrote a letter saying good-bye. I don't know how helpful it was but it didn't hurt.
In the next sessions, my husband joined me for support. The therapist started telling us we needed to get passed the pain. I thought it was too soon to tell me to get over it. I was no where near ready. In fact, it's almost been 2 years and I still don't know if I'm ready. The point being that I didn't think she should tell me when I'm ready. What I wanted from her was someone to listen. I wanted my first therapist, "the wall". Turns out he did have a function.
While my husband and I were seeing my third therapist, we got pregnant. It was our first, after years of trying and we were ecstatic. I thought this was surely God's gift to us to help us move passed the grief. I was wrong. We lost our baby a of couple months in. I can't even describe the anger that I felt.
Throughout my father's whole ordeal, I'd managed to keep my faith. When I lost my baby though, I lost my faith and I cursed God. It's not something I'm proud of. I just felt so lost. I couldn't wrap my brain around the dreaded "why?" question.
Fortunately, we got pregnant again 3 months later and we now have a healthy baby boy. My faith is restored. I know that I am blessed.
