Angry at Life, Angry at Death, Angry at Myself, Too

Forty odd years ago, a look at the grieving process identified five stages of grief, beginning with denial and isolation, followed by anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance -- a generally accepted pathway for grief that of course, isn't a rulebook.

Yet I find that when I looked up the steps, they have indeed been the ones I've begun to stumble through, although I think bargaining will be more of a series of "what ifs," or perhaps a battle with the guilt I feel looming, as there is no negotiation with death.

A week ago, when I got the call, I sat alone and cried. I had stayed home sick from church after inheriting some upper sinus crap from the children, and when my husband called after service, I told him the news and sent him on to the the grocery store. I didn't want anyone to cry on. I didn't want to be comforted. I didn't want it to be made more real by existing in some space other than my telephone and the virtual world of my computer. I sat and spilled out my pain in the blog I sent out the next morning -- the blog I've shared repeatedly and begged people to share because it hurt, and I wanted it to mean something by helping someone.

For the last week I've done a fairly good job of hanging on to anger, but I know that will wear thin after a while.

It's easier to be angry at the young man who destroyed his life over and over again than it is to deal with all the other losses contained inside his death. Just like blowing up because his lousy father didn't even come to his funeral, I know I probably have to let this anger out to move on and really grieve.

So yes, I'm pissed at Ethan. I'm pissed at him for using drugs, for not calling except when he wanted something or was so messed up that he didn't make sense, for never seeming to care about anyone but himself.

I'm pissed at him for not going to the doctor because maybe, just maybe, there was something else going on that could have been treated.

I'm pissed at him for dying. At Christmas.

That's a lot of anger and it's not all purely true, but this last week it's been easier to hang onto those bits of anger because anger makes you stronger sometimes. When you're angry, you do things you wouldn't normally do. Like laugh at a funeral. Like let myself live because the depths of that the grief that consumes me might just drown me if I didn't have anger to hang onto right now.

But the facts about what I'm angry about will help me breathe a little easier, too.

I'm angry that Ethan decided, when just a little kid in middle school or maybe just as he was starting high school, that getting high might be cool. But I know that there was a time that he was very unhappy with the heavy boy who wore glasses and braces and that he couldn't see past that temporary reality to the man he would become. I know that his friends were doing it, and that he craved their approval more than I ever understood. I know that the DARE program that had warned Ethan about the dangers of alcohol and illegal drugs, hadn't caught up with the abuse of prescriptions and darn sure never touched on the dangers of dextromethorphan, which was so easy to get and deceptively safe.

I know that despite being so much alike in appearance and personality, Ethan wasn't a carbon copy of me. That loner streak that saw me through my middle and high school days didn't run through him. Unlike my first dog, the dog he loved wasn't the constant companion that got him out of the house and helped him find happiness in a world that didn't rely on friends (no fault of the dog's, mind you). He didn't develop the desire he had to create and do and accomplish things. I didn't have the addictive genetic makeup he apparently inherited.

I know it was an innocent choice at first, and that he was lonely and angry and confused and terribly young, and by the time he started sorting himself out of those feelings, he was addicted and it was really hard to fight. Addiction doesn't go away just because you aren't taking your drug of choice, it hangs around and whispers about the good times you had. It changes the way your mind works. It comes up in conversation with your friends to remind you how you miss it. When something goes wrong, it's there waiting to welcome you back. It takes over your brain so that other things that people think will bring you pleasure just aren't that great. It deceives you, like the Devil, promising only wonderful things while it wrecks your life and you cannot even see it happening.

Despite our efforts to help him negotiate being clean and learn to function without his old friend, Ethan just couldn't. I know he did his best, and while I'm angry, it's beginning to be the at the drug and its availability, not at the boy/man who couldn't escape it.

And no, he really didn't just call when he needed something. Sometimes I know he called just to hear my voice and that he missed me as badly as I missed him. But our connection was damaged and neither of us could fix it or say the right words. The love that pulled us so close meant we hurt each other, that I was the one he lashed out at in his pain. It was probably easier to ask for money than to ask for some less tangible thing he couldn't identify. It was probably easier to lean on the friend he could find at the Dollar store than confront the tangled emotions we had toward each other. And of course, we both thought we had time, a lot of it.

I know that he cared. Sometimes he would tell me I worked too hard. Sometimes he would admit he was glad I had a husband that took care of me. Sometimes his conversation was mostly about how things were here because he didn't have a life he could share, and sometimes a rambling, adolescent tale about what he wanted to do with his life. He still dreamed of doing things, but like a kid, not a young man, because the drug had stunted his emotional and mental growth. And how many kids actually remember a parent's birthday? But just this year, when he'd been clean for ages, he skipped a Mother's Day get together when I was so looking forward to seeing him. The little cards and gifts that other moms can count on never came from him. He was a tornado, taking everything in his path and needing more and that hurt and still hurts. Those moments of compassion were so consumed by his needs, by the fact that the drugs made him focus on himself because nothing else could bring him pleasure.

I wonder why we could not persuade him to see a doctor when he was in so much pain the last couple of weeks -- not just the emotional and mental pain that I think he dealt with almost constantly (and which he also refused to accept help for), but the physical pain. He'd never resisted seeing a doctor before when he felt bad. Had he done something he didn't want to deal with in a doctor's office? Was he afraid he knew what was wrong?

I'm angry that he died, not at him. I'm angry that whatever demons drove him were too much. That God decided he'd had his share of pain (how selfish is that?) and let him finally escape. I'm angry at God, and He knows it.

I'm angry at the people who went with him down the path of addiction, not so much the kids that he stumbled into it with, but the men who were still involved in it with him and eager to help him return whenever he got clean. I'm angry at everyone that failed him in any way, because it's almost impossible to accept that something could not have changed him.

To be honest, I'm angry at me. I'm angry that I couldn't force him to be different, better, happy, clean. That I couldn't find the words that would make him change. I'm angry because there is a part of me that no matter how many times I tell myself I did the absolute best that I knew how, that I prayed and wept and talked and gave and gave and tried to practice tough love too, feels like I failed.

I'm angry at me because no matter how much I love him, I couldn't save him.

'I Just Don't Know What to Say'

Ten years ago, a friend of mine lost her daughter in a car accident. I knew she had to be in such incomprehensible pain, and I didn't know what to say.

We didn't have the fairly safe option of sending a post on Facebook, or a text message. I knew that to offer any sympathy, I would have to confront that raw pain. I would have to pick up the phone and let myself dip my toes in a dark lake where I didn't want to go, a dark lake where it would be too easy to drown.

So, for a long time, I didn't talk to her. Our jobs had changed and we weren't in as much contact anyway. Then came the day when I saw her across a drug store parking lot. I still remember thinking she hadn't seen me and I could just go in because she was almost to her car. Instead I called her name and walked across the lot to talk to her.

I still didn't know what to say, but it didn't matter. She didn't need to hear my words, she needed to feel my support and caring. She needed to talk about her daughter, her family, their process and pain, and for a long time I stood and held her and listened and cried.

This week she came to my house and held me and listened to my rambling voice and ignored the uncombed hair, wrinkled clothing and unmade face and the chaos of three small children and three small dogs beneath our feet. Before she left I apologized for not coming to her sooner.

In the last few days, I've received support from strangers who somehow found this blog and sent me comments or Facebook messages. I've been overwhelmed by the calls and texts and visits. I've been lifted up by the people in my life, some of whom I don't really even know beyond casually, who have gone the extra mile (sometimes literally) to let me know they care. But like my friend, who may have noticed that I didn't call, there have been people I know and care about who have been absent.

While I have wanted them to call or reach out in some way, I understand their absence, because at one time I did the same. Although we're fairly comfortable talking to someone who has lost a parent -- after all, that's the "natural" order of things -- and we come closer to being able to deal with the loss of a spouse or sibling, the loss of a child is something that we don't want to think about.

I understand that you don't want to get near a parent's grief because you think you can imagine how bad it is and you just don't know what to say or do. For a parent, the loss of a child is the worse thing you can imagine, and I can tell you it is worse that you can imagine. You don't want that pain to touch you, even from someone else. You don't want to imagine being pulled into that dark lake and knowing that your child, that baby that you held when they were born, that you helped learn to walk, ride a bike, and all the millions of things along the way to whatever point they have reached, is gone.

I understand, because that knowledge will knock the breath from your chest, set your heart racing and send you reeling through your days, looking for bits of a normal life to hang on to.

But from this side of the invisible wall that separates parents with living children from parents who have lost a child, I can tell you that reaching out is what we need.

Except for those few special people who I know who have already walked this path for different reasons, you won't know what to say. And here's a secret, even if you've lost a child, you still don't have any words that will take away the grief from another parents' heart, all you have then is the knowledge that it is something you can survive.

However people have reached out to me, they have said, "I don't know what to say." And do you know, I don't expect them to? I don't expect my pastor to have some magical answer from God or some scripture that will give me understanding. I don't expect my best friend to be able to make me smile. I don't expect the people that I've worked or played alongside to have the words to help fill this hole in my heart. I don't expect other parents who have lost children to be able to do more than offer me hope.

All a grieving parent needs is a hug, a shoulder to cry on and an ear that isn't already tired of hearing the same broken story that we come to feel we've repeated a million times. We need to cry. We need to touch life. We may find a hug that reminds us of the one that is gone and if we do, I'm sorry, but we may ask you for a hug a hundred times before the pain in our hearts eases one iota. We need to talk about our child because we know that child is dead, but we need to know that others remember that he lived. If you were the child's friend, share your memories and pictures. If you never knew them, let the parent give a memory. Just be there.

This week, my words have been about the struggle to save him from himself. Sometimes they have been about my guilt, because whatever happens to a child, a parent will feel some responsibility. With some people they have been about my hope that this can somehow be part of helping someone else and making a difference. There will be a time when I want to talk about how wonderful he was before he changed, when I let myself take down the photo albums and cry over the baby, the little boy, and the adolescent that I lost inside the broken young man who died. There will be a time when I slowly begin to take out my dreams for him and weep over them because they will never come true.

Everyone who has reached out to me, be they fellow travelers in this land of grief, friends, or strangers, has helped me keep going. They've helped me hold myself together because they have said they care, because they've sent up prayers, because they've been willing to listen in one way or another to what I needed to say, because they've let my son into their lives and grieved along with me.

No, there is nothing anyone can say that makes it better. As my friends who know have said, it's not something you get over, it's something you get through and live with. This will be my reality for the rest of my time on earth. Maybe there will be days when I don't think about it, and I'm sure in time it won't consume me, but it always will be a part of me.

So what can you do when there's nothing you can do?

Don't flee from the pain of a grieving parent because you don't know what to say. Don't avoid talking about the child you knew or mentioning the loss. Don't worry about doing the wrong thing. Don't feel helpless in the face of our pain.

Open your ears, your arms and your heart and be honest. Go ahead and say, "I don't know what to say." It's OK. No one does. We'll do the talking for you.