Death comes in many forms; fast, slow and everything in between.   Contrary to popular belief one is not easier or better than the other for the loved ones left behind.  Yes, if the person has a lengthy illness there is more time for us to fulfill our selfish need to make sure that everything is said and the person can move on with our emotions in a nice, neat package.  There is no nice, neat package.  It may feel that way at the time but after a day, week or month the emotions come back and we find ourselves wishing for more.  More time.

When someone dies they are gone no matter the reason.  When that first family event or holiday comes around do you care why or how the person died or do you just wish they could be there to share it with you?  Do you say, “Well, we had a great year with that person while they suffered and lost their life and dignity slowly and painfully.  Pass the potatoes.”?

Life moving on without someone that we love is painful whether it was a sudden accident, murder or an illness that took them slowly.

I had not experienced an “illness” death that was close to me as an adult until Grandma T.  She was a guiding force in my life.  Grandma gave advice whether you wanted it or not.  She knew what you were up to – especially if you didn’t want her to.  When she broke her leg by making a misstep on a staircase my whole life stopped, along with other members of the family.  She was like a mother to me; she had taken care of me as an infant.  She and I were very close.  I was her “Little Lamb”; the only person in her life to have a nickname.   I had known that at 89 her time was coming but again, knowing doesn’t matter when it actually comes.

She was in the hospital on high doses of morphine after surgery.  I fought to get to her 2 ½ hours away.  Money was tight; I was working a lot of hours while Pasith finished up school and worked.  Sidney was 4 years old and so it all complicated my getting to her side.  I prayed that she would make it till I could get to her.  I just needed to see her one more time.  Just needed to see it for myself; this woman that I loved so much and who had always been such a rock taken down by a broken leg.

When I went in to her room at the hospital she looked so small.  My Aunt was there – she was always there.  She is an angel in our family.  My Grandma had been asking for her children and grandchildren.  It is a wonderful feeling to be thought of by someone at a time like that and yet heartbreaking.  When she saw me I went to her side and she grabbed my hand – it was so warm.  She started to cry and said, “My Little Lamb”.  I had never seen her cry.  She knew me even through the drugs.  I didn’t know what to expect because she had become quite angry at times through her drugged state, which was not part of who she was at all.  But she hung on to my hand and pulled me in for a hug.  Grandma wasn’t normally a very physically affectionate person; I was so thankful for that change among many other painful changes.  I needed to feel her.  We chatted a little but she was in and out of coherent conversation.  She was hearing music and sermons and would tell you what they were about – after she got annoyed that you weren’t listening.  She had cats that would visit – in addition to the family dog.  Grandma would request that the music be turned down on the radio that only she could hear and would get very agitated when you didn’t comply.  There were little men making fires in the corners of her room.  It was difficult but we were able to find some humor in the midst of the heartbreak.

My Mom and I stayed at my Aunt’s and went back in the morning prior to leaving for home.  That next day was one of the most difficult in my life.  Everything was fine until we had to leave.  We had become accustomed to the ramblings and the momentary agitation, waiting for the moments of clarity to come back.  She had a wonderful phone conversation with my Uncle about deer hunting.  She was so excited to hear about the deer he had just shot.  How big is it?  Was it a buck?  How many points if it was a buck?  Asking for every detail of how it happened.   When was he coming to see her again?  And once she was off the phone she was like a little kid telling us all about the deer.  Then the clarity was gone again.

I hoped that this would not be the end but I knew it was the last time I would see her.  I would have to say that is the worst kind of dread you can have.  When do you walk away?  When and how do you say goodbye the last time?  How many hugs do you have to give before you have had enough to be able to walk out of the room?  How many times do you have to say “I love you” before you are ready to leave?  I will have those last moments in my mind for the rest of my life.  Did I say enough?  Did I do enough?  Why didn’t I just stay?  Did I really have to leave?  Was my job and life at home more important than the last moments with this woman who had cared for me as an infant and had helped raise me?  I so wanted to stay.

When I finally did leave the room she was still talking.  I’m not sure if she was talking to me or herself because she had slipped into the drugs again.  But, the horror of leaving while she was mumbling alone in a room is indescribable.   How do you just walk away?  How do you let go of their hand?   But I was reassured from my Aunt that it was ok to leave.  I am so thankful for the good memories that I have of her to counter what that visit was like.  I don’t know how my Aunt did it for a month; seeing her, feeding her, caring for her, taking harsh words from the “drugged” person that temporarily took over her Mother’s body without notice.

Grandma passed away peacefully in her sleep on November 25^th, 2003.

I don’t remember sunlight during the month between her breaking her leg and her passing.  All I remember is darkness.  I had horrible nightmares during that month and for about 6 months after.  Because she passed away in November in northern Minnesota the funeral home wouldn’t bury her till spring.  For some reason I could not come out of the deep grief until she was buried.  It was just like I went through her dying over and over for months.   I would dream that she was still alive and then would suddenly realize that she had really died.  Sometimes she would also realize it in the dream and sometimes I had to wake up to realize it.  Those months were very difficult and I was so thankful when the nightmares ended after she was buried in May of 2004.  I have no regrets about that final visit, except that I couldn’t stay longer or go more often.  The nightmares in the subsequent months pale in comparison to the incredible influence she had in my life.  I treasure every minute with her.

I wrote the following just over 2 years ago.  I’m not sure what set me off but I was in an emotional purge.  I wrote it in one sitting furiously typing.  Very cathartic.  But very difficult to make public.  Parts of this was featured in a friend’s blog for Father’s Day a few years ago but this is the full purge:

I never knew my Dad.  Does that matter?

If I never knew him what difference does it make?  Does it make a difference if he is dead or alive?  If he is living on the other side of the world versus being buried in the ground – does it matter?

Does it matter who he was?  Is “a Dad” just an idea or a figurehead if you never knew the person?  Is “a Dad” just an ideal if I never met mine?  Do I just want one because everyone else has one?

Did he really exist?  What proof do I have that he did exist?  Does it matter?  Should I even bother asking?  Or do I just ignore the feelings and move on as if he never did exist and just live my life “as is”?  Do I need to ask any of these questions to have a fulfilling life?  Am I dwelling or rehashing to want to know?  Is my asking questions annoying or childish?

Does my wanting his approval make me weak?  What is his approval?  It’s what people tell me it would be.  There is no physical way for me to have his approval.  So, why does it mean so much to me?  Why do I have to desire most the one thing that I will never have?  Why can’t I accept the approval of the people who are still here?  Why aren’t their opinions enough?

How do you miss “the person” if you never met “the person”?  Isn’t it just the idea of the person that you miss?  I have an amazing imagination but as much as I try to imagine what that person would be like nothing comes up.  It’s a blank canvas.  Anyone can tell me anything and I have no way of knowing if they are telling me the truth.  All I can do is decide which stories to believe.  How do you do that when you have nothing to go on?  I treasure every story that I hear.  I treasure every moment that I have with my Dad’s family because they are the only way to confirm that he really existed.  Anyone’s name can be put on a birth certificate.  Any man’s picture can be put up on the wall.  Any story can be created to satisfy a child, but at least when I’m with his sisters I know that they must have known him.  They look like the picture on the wall.  Do I look like the picture on the wall?  I’m told that I do.

Do other “posthumous children” feel this way?  Am I alone in my feelings?

Is it better to be born before or after?  I have been asked this question before and I don’t have an answer.  There is so much damage no matter how you look at it.  Neither.  Neither is the answer.  There shouldn’t be a before and after.   There should just be time.

Is it supposed to make me feel better to be born after; to have escaped the tragedy?  Did I escape the tragedy?  Not even close.  I remember people trying to make me feel better by saying, “Well at least you don’t remember anything.”

How is that better?  I would give just about anything right now to remember and have something of him to hang on to.  Isn’t it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all?  Is that just for adults afraid of a relationship?  To me it seems universal.

Why can’t I just move passed it and be happy with my incredible family; my husband and children.  Don’t get me wrong – I love them dearly and they all make me very happy.  I just wish that I didn’t have this desire for more.  I will always be looking for my Dad.  Will I ever find him?  Can’t I just give it up and be content?  Why does my mind always have to move to the thoughts of him and the fact that he isn’t here to see how happy and content we are?  It is a vicious cycle.  The way to know that life has moved on is to wish that the missing person were here to see your progress and your “new” life.  Does that mean that I have moved on?  But how can I move on if I always want him to be here?

I used to believe, or one of my many beliefs when I was little, that my Dad hadn’t died.  He was somewhere.  He was out there.  My Mom was hiding him somewhere.  She and my sister would go to see him but they wouldn’t take me.  They didn’t want me to know him.  I don’t know why they didn’t want me to but they never invited me along.  Why am I not good enough to go along?  Why doesn’t he want me to come see him?  Did I do something to make him not want me around?  Why does he stay away?

I don’t know what, if anything my Mom could have done to change these feelings that I had.  They were just there.  And they were there for a lot longer than I would have admitted.  I think I still have some of those feelings.  Why did he have to leave before I came?  Why wasn’t I good enough to have and know a father?  Would I be a different person if he had been around after I was born?  Of course I would be.  Who would I be?  Would I be a better person?  Would I be smarter, more grateful?  I think I would have just wished for more time no matter how much time I had.  That’s what I wish for with all of the other people that have passed since.  So what difference does it make?

I used to dream about my belief that he hadn’t died.  One dream in particular when I was about 15 was that I was 7 years old and I walked into the dining room of the house we lived in at that time and there was a man sitting there.  He was talking to my sister; my Mom was getting dinner ready.  It was like a normal day.  But, this man – who was he?  I walked up to him.  He just looked at me and then continued to talk to my sister.  I didn’t feel welcome at all.  I was interrupting.  He wanted nothing to do with me.  I started to back up and felt incredible sadness.  And I woke up.

Will I ever let the rejection go?  Will I ever realize that this feeling is a result of unfortunate circumstances and not based on truth?  If I had a picture of him holding me as a baby – would I believe the picture?  If I had a memory of him playing with me as a child would I believe the memory?  I don’t know what it would have taken for me to know and believe the truth.  I hope I get there someday.

Well, I have to admit that country music is not my favorite.  But there is one song that sticks with me.  Garth Brooks “The Dance”.  It always reminds me of my Mom, my parents.

Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared beneath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known you’d ever say goodbye
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I’d of had to miss the dance
Holding you I held everything
For a moment wasn’t I the king
But if I’d only known how the king would fall
Hey who’s to say you know I might have changed it all
And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I’d of had to miss the dance
Yes my life is better left to chance
I could have missed the pain but I’d of had to miss the dance

–          Written by Tony Arata

I always wondered if my Mom regretted marrying my Dad.  Did she wish that she had stayed in Minnesota?  It would have been so much easier.  Safer.  I wouldn’t blame her if she did have regrets.  It wasn’t my most burning question but I didn’t think that I would ever know the truth.  In my Mom’s last year, especially in her last weeks we had conversations that I never thought we would have.  She was so much freer than I had ever seen her.  I know that this is the natural instinct when death is near but I didn’t know if this would be the case with my Mom.  I’m thankful that it was.   But even with her new found freedom of thought I didn’t think I could ask her this question.  I didn’t know if I could handle the answer.

A few weeks before she died she was talking about my Dad and suddenly just said, “I don’t regret any of it.”  My heart skipped and I wanted to be sure of what she was saying so I asked if she was talking about marrying my Dad.  She said, “Yes.”  She said that it hadn’t been easy.  It had been very painful but she didn’t regret those three years they had together.  It had been worth it.

That is what I want to remember today, June 12, 2011.  35 years after my Dad was murdered and my Mom was left to raise us.  It was and is worth the pain.

One of the worst aspects of missing someone for me is knowing that other people are in the same position.  I wish I were the only one.  Not for notoriety or exclusivity but because the feelings that I have should never be felt.  Not by me or anyone else.  Not to say that everyone will feel the same way because obviously they won’t.  But the basic feeling of yearning for a person that you love who has passed for any reason is universal.  Missing someone is so very painful; physically, mentally, spiritually painful.  The gut wrenching pain that starts in your chest and moves to your stomach and up into your head and just won’t let go.  No matter what you do you cannot escape that awful nagging feeling that takes over your body; the feeling that nothing will ever be the same again.

Nothing will ever be the same again.  Making that realization is very difficult but very necessary.  Getting past the constant pain to get back to life doesn’t mean that life will go back to normal.  For one thing, what is normal?  Second, the normal you knew included someone that is no longer there.  So, if they can never return how can normal return?  It seems so simple but yet it is an elusive conclusion that most people cannot seem to come to.

It was at the 25 year mark that I really lost it.  It was June of 2001.  I was just starting a new job; our daughter was 20 months old.  Pasith had just started school.  Our lives were pretty intense.  I don’t know what it was that set me off.  I don’t know if it was my daughter or the big “25” that seems to be a marker for anniversaries.

Whatever the trigger was it hit harder than it ever had.  When I went for my first interview for this new job the head of Human Resources at the time was wonderful.  She made you feel comfortable and relaxed.  During my first interview I felt fine.  But the second time I met with her I was depressed and sad.  I couldn’t muster up a smile.  I was a different person.  I was in a fog like I had never experienced.  The pain was overwhelming.  I could hardly remember driving to the office.  It was June 12^th, 2001.  25 years to the day.  I tried to hide it.  I tried so hard to smile, to bolster the energy to at least sound cheerful or even human.  I just couldn’t do it.  Finally, she asked me if I was ok.  I had to be honest and said, “No.”  I explained what day it was and how it had never affected me this way before; that I was lost in the fog.  She was understanding and wonderful.  She wasn’t falling over herself to be sympathetic, didn’t ask a million questions.  She just let me say what I needed to on the subject and left it at that.  I was in so deep I didn’t care if she believed me or not or if I got the job at that point or not.  But, she did hire me – in spite of me.

I was like that for a month.  I could not come out of it.  I went through my 2 weeks of job training around my birthday, June 25^th and couldn’t focus.  I still didn’t really know what the real issue was.  I mean I had always had nightmares during the month of June and sometimes I was a little sad for a day or two.  And some years I forgot about it until my birthday and then I felt bad that I hadn’t been sad.  But, this was different.  I couldn’t shake this horrible feeling of dreading getting out of bed in the morning.  It took till almost the end of the fog for me to realize what was happening.

Well, this realization was that I suddenly knew that the pain didn’t stop with me.  Maybe that year was when I finally grew up and realized that the earth didn’t revolve around me.  Not sure but I’d prefer that my big realizations in life come a little more gently.  The pain of not knowing or having my father did not and does not stop with me.  My daughter will not know her grandfather or have a ride on the farm tractor.  She would never run around the farm chasing the chickens while my Dad looked on.  She would never feel his hugs and hear his “I love you’s”.  She would suffer the same fate as I had.   My then future son would never know him.  But it didn’t stop with my children either.  My niece and future niece would never know their grandfather either; and all the grandnieces and nephews.  The pain didn’t end with me and my sister.  The pain would continue to spread to the people around us.  And there was nothing I could do to stop it.  I felt so helpless.  And the special life moments would continue to have one person missing.  Aside from all of the moments that he had already missed, there were my children being born, their birthdays, their Christmas’s, their recitals and concerts.  Why does the victimization have to continue through generations?  Isn’t one generation of suffering enough?  I was innocent and surely my children are and they deserve a grandfather.  It’s called the ripple effect and I hate it.

When I finally came to the conclusion that there would be other people in their lives that would fill that space to some extent the same way that many people had done for me I was able to let it go – or let it go enough to move on with my life.  Sidney had another Grandpa that she loved very much and she has uncles close by that love her very much.  God puts the people in our lives that we need.  And I now have to trust that he will do the same for my children and nieces that he did for me.  Trust is hard.   All I can do is to make sure that they know who he was and that he really did exist and hope that the memories will lessen the pain for all of us.

I wrote this last year about this time.  It is still very relevant.  I do feel like I have moved forward but I definitely have more to do.

Some days I wake up wandering in the desert surrounded by sand that burns my feet but forces me to keep moving to feel the slight cooling when my foot comes off the ground.  I want to stop to see if I can find any small clue in the skies or on the ground that will tell me the right direction to go but I have to keep moving to look for shade and water.   The hot sun is beating down on me sapping me of my energy and focus.  I feel lost looking up, down and in every direction for something, anything, and there is nothing there.  I have a compass but in my confusion I’m not sure if I’m reading it right.  I think I hear someone off in the distance trying to call me to them but I just can’t seem to find them.  What if it is just a mirage I’m chasing in the opposite direction of where I’m supposed to be going?

Other days I wake up wandering in the frozen Arctic surrounded by snow and ice.  I’m trudging through the deep snow in exhaustion afraid to stop and freeze to death but also afraid to move and fall in a deep crevice.    Again, I have a compass but in these circumstances it feels so inadequate.  I don’t trust it or myself.  I am desperately searching the skies and the horizon for anything that will help me.  I feel I should be patient and trust that help is coming but what if I miss help by slowing down?  What if help is around the next corner ready to leave and I don’t get there fast enough?

I’m sick and I’m tired.  I need guidance.  I need someone to help me see the way.  I’m trying to hear God through the storms that negativity keeps kicking up but he seems out of reach.  And I’m afraid that I’m misinterpreting what I do hear.

Am I where I am supposed to be?  Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?  Am I missing something?  Did I miss a crucial step to end up here?  When I look back I feel like I have been floating down the river in a canoe most of my life; just going with the current of life.  When high waves came up I allowed them to just happen and figured that I had to accept it as part of the river.  I would bail out the water and keep going down the river with my eyes on the next wave.  I have not lived with intention.  I have not had my feet on the ground with my eyes to the heavens.  I have just been hoping that when I stepped out of the river I’d be at the right port.  I have not asked for clear directions on how to get out of the canoe or where to get out.

I want to live with intention out of the canoe and on solid ground.  I have the instructions on how to get out of the canoe I just need help figuring them out.  I’m afraid of capsizing the boat, or getting out at the wrong spot.  And how do I change my course so drastically without causing hurt or damage to my family?

This adventure of getting out of the boat feels like it has been going on a long time.  It took me a few years to realize that I was in a boat; then a few more years to realize that I may not be in the right one or belong in one at all.  Now I have to figure out how to get out.  Then figure out what to do next.  The task feels too huge.  The river is going too fast and the waves are getting higher.  Most days I’m just happy to be in the canoe and not in the river.  I hang on to the sides and bail water to stay afloat.  In the meantime I fear that I am missing out on life and letting down my family and the people around me.  If only the water and waves would just slow down long enough for me to get my thoughts and strength together.

I know that God will give me his strength and will calm the storm.  I just can’t seem to get through to him right now.  The waves are just too much.  But I will keep trying.