Let's Hear It for Forced Holidays

I hate Father's Day. Mother's Day too, for that matter. And while we're at it, Valentine's and the seldom noticed Grandparent's Day (and Best Friends Day etc.).

These made up celebrations of love and thanks are just that, contrived as a way to tweak the heartstrings and pull a few dollars from our wallets for cards, meals, and gifts.

The reality is not everyone has these people in their life to celebrate, or people in those roles who are worth celebrating.

Not every father or mother receives a gift, card or even a phone call. Sometimes it's because the child doesn't feel the emotions that drive that gesture. Sometimes it's because the child isn't alive any more.

Mother's Day this year was probably the hardest holiday for me since Ethan died.

It was partially because I was at my third Mother's Day without him and I expected it would be easier, but in reality, it wasn't. Two years earlier, he had been slated to join the family at church and for dinner, but instead he chose to begin using drugs again at about that time. There was some vague talk of girls showing up at his apartment. I doubt they ever arrived and that was just the excuse he needed to start using again. Last year everyone warned me it would be tough, so I guess I braced myself. Even though he'd only been dead five months, it wasn't quite so bad. This year was awful.

So now it's the flip side of that coin, Father's Day when I mourn for my son and the men who could have played that role in his life. Not on their behalf, but his. I also mourn the father he wanted to be and the children he never had.

The man I chose for my first husband and father of my children turned out be a lousy provider, an unbearable partner, and a deadbeat dad. He paid very little child support, and completely disappeared from the lives of his children when I remarried. When Ethan reached the age that he wanted to reconnect, I didn't worry about the money and did my best to ease that effort. But his calls to his "father" didn't result in time or visits, just heartbreak. Even as a young man he continued to try and met the same emotionless response.

The man didn't even show up for his son's funeral and has probably never been to his grave. He never knew the wonderful young man who died and I doubt he has the good sense to mourn his loss. He's never seen his youngest granddaughter and probably never will, as his daughter has wrote him out of her life as well.

There were others who could have stepped into the role, men who had known my son all his life and who he might have been comfortable turning to: my childless brother, my father, my grandpa.

My grandpa lost my grandma, and much of his drive, and then died at the time when Ethan began really needing a man around. He would have been such a good person to turn to, because somehow he and my grandmother were both able to reach across a lot of generational gaps with advice that was sometimes tough but because of who they were still loving.

At the same time, I sometimes wonder if men don't choose to remain childless out of a fear that they will turn into their fathers and don't wish to inflict that on another child. My brother didn't try to be a role model. My father spent a lot of time with Ethan as an adult, but in many ways it was the same quality as the time he spent with me (belittling, judgmental and lacking in love, kindness or support).

My husband came along too late in Ethan's life and they were never really able to connect across the storms known as puberty that were already shaking my son's identity.

Instead Ethan chose as a male role model the father of a close friend who would turn a blind eye to their youthful exploits and allow him to hang out as much as he wanted. That freedom made him leave home at 16 -- a difficult age in North Carolina where children are considered legally adults in many aspects and he felt entitled to make his own decisions. When he came home a few months later to finish high school, I'd already lost him completely to the addiction that eventually consumed his life.

So I have a personal grievance against Father's Day. Painful memories of Mother's Day. Enough lonely Valentine's Days to sour me on the date, and think Grandparent's Day is a total effort to get bucks without any merit. (Best Friend's Day, well, make me choose one why don't you?).

At the same time, if you're blessed to want to celebrate any of these holidays, chances are you really don't need to.

If those relationships (fathers, mothers, sweethearts, friends or grandparents) are worthy of celebration, then there are regular calls, visits and shared meals, and there's no need for the commercial gimmicks that drive the "holiday."

Personally, if they all disappeared from the calendar, I wouldn't mind. Any relationship that deserves the notice of the day isn't made stronger by having it, or made any more special by the dollars spent commemorating it. And every commercial, card and comment only drives pain into the hearts of those who, for whatever reason, don't have it: the fathers and mothers without children, the children without parents, the brokenhearted without those they love.

It's not too late for reinvention

The other day I looked In the mirror and saw Holly Hunter.

Well almost.

Years ago when Holly Hunter played a tough as nails but faith challenged, hard-living detective on "Saving Grace," I fell in live with her physique. I loved her wild blonde hair not terribly unlike my own and I longed to have her ripped yet skinny arms and legs, her slender torso where ribs and vertebra were prominent.

She defined the somehow scrawny but fit woman I would like to be.

I read that her appearance was often what resulted when more mature women went for more muscle and weight loss. Some combination of diet, workout and getting older creates that sculpted pared down appearance. I liked it, but I never dreamed I would have it.

Yet I looked in the mirror the other day and there she was. I was so excited I had to tell my husband. "Look I have Holly Hunter's arms!" He feigned understanding so of course I had to explain the whole background.

If I could have dreamed a new body, that's the body I would have dreamed.

The fact that I dug it out of the cocoon of more than a year of comfort eating made it doubly surprising.

Before my 23-year-old son died, I was at my most fit point. When I got the call informing me that he'd been found dead, I was logging five miles on the exercise bike that I'm not sure I ever rode again. Instead I allowed myself to find comfort in food, or alcohol. I couldn't make myself do solitary exercising like walking for miles. Even though I still made it to the dance studio for Zumba and Piyo, I slowly added the pounds back on. I wasn't overweight, but my favorite clothes were getting too tight.

Earlier this year I had to decide whether to invest in bigger clothes or get back in shape. I had purchase Piyo from Beachbody last summer when my class was canceled, but I'd never committed to it like I did the live class. Still, the free coach who came along with it was the person I contacted when I decided I needed something more. Thanks to social media, she was well acquainted with my lifestyle and recommended 21 Day Fix Extreme.

I told her the workouts looked pretty "kick ass" and she told me she thought that despite my status as a three-time grandmother I could handle it.

I didn't expect a transformation, but that's what I got.

I stuck with the program, which did kick ass, for three weeks despite falling asleep on the sofa an hour early and having to miss my weekly Zumba fix because my sore legs couldn't handle extra exercise. I gave up cream in my coffee, wine to help me sleep, and bread. I persevered even though I couldn't really see a difference and neither the scale nor the tape measure were arguing with me.

Then I finished, but in three weeks I'd learned a new way of eating. I'd thought for a long time that I was not eating the right amounts of foods and probably chronically undereating. I decided to keep following the eating plan, even though I gave the exercises a rest.

The pounds seemingly melted away, burned by the muscle my coach had assured me I was building during the workouts. My favorite clothes fit, then got too big. I finally had to buy new clothes anyway, but several sizes smaller than what I'd been wearing. I've gone back to enjoying a few favorites on the weekends -- wine and a burger, perhaps some dessert -- but I know that I've changed forever the way I eat. It's been four months now and I have no desire to return to the person I was a year ago, or even six months ago.

I don't keep the same exercise routine, but I've done the entire "Fix" twice and I'm working on a third time, looking for muscle not weight loss now. And I'm able to combine it with dog walking, playing in the pool, or my weekly Zumba fix without keeling over from exhaustion.

I've become so passionate about the program and what it did for me that I've signed up as a Beachbody coach myself. I'm also considering training to teach the program that first got me into Beachbody, Piyo, which I still love, but mostly as a live class that I cannot find locally.

Although the program can involve making money if you're really good at it, it's not about that to me. It's about looking around me at friends who don't feel good or don't like the way they look and realizing that it really can be as simple as a short commitment that changes the way you live. You can do it when you're 20, 30, 40, or even in your 50s. (That's as far as my own experience can take me.) I wish I'd done it sooner. I wish I'd known what to do.

I want other people to find the person they'd like to see in the mirror. Whether it's Holly Hunter, or someone else entirely.

And most of all I want them to see that the face smiling back at them is their own.

We should have celebrated instead of mourned

We should have been celebrating somewhere today.

The sense of what should have been and what is missing has hovered over my afternoon like a dark storm cloud, finally descending on me as I took a brief walk with my dogs.

As a family, we should have been gathered somewhere eating pizza and laughing at Ethan mimicking my dad, who wouldn't hear it and would have no clue what we were laughing about, or wielding our cumulative sharp wit at one another and innocent bystanders. We should have split a couple dozen chocolate-covered, cream-filled Krispy Kreme doughnuts or a big chocolate cake, and sung happy birthday.

On Tuesday, my mom will observe her birthday. There will be no celebration to speak of, because it would also have been Ethan's birthday.

My son, had he lived, would have been 25.

Ten years ago, I would have imagined a day filled with promise. A bright young man with a college degree and a wife, or at least a fiancee on his way to living his dream.

Five years ago there was still hope that the addiction had released him. He had an apartment and was being treated for the seizures caused by his drug abuse. I didn't know he was still using, and that jail time and a horrible automobile accident weren't all that far in his future.

Just two years ago, he was living sober and there was hope that somehow he'd manage to stay that way. Then he lost his support network, alienated the people who would have helped him stay clean, and withdrew into a spiral that left him alone, finally dead of an overdose.

So there was no celebration today, and won't be on Tuesday. My mom who once delighted in sharing a birthday now has an especially painful memory instead.

For the last week it seems the harder I have tried to run from the reality of what will be, the harder it has stalked me. I'm like a mouse being toyed with by a cat. I'm not really getting away, no matter how busy I make myself.

Today, I decided not to run. To sit down by the computer and once again give in to the tides of grief that I've been avoiding fairly well; to return to therapy, as it were, because I know that facing the pain, wrestling with it through words, helps me in the end.

So Loved

It was one of those inspirational signs that got me thinking.

It referred to Jesus as God's unspeakable gift. While I didn't really get the word choice (Unspeakable? Wouldn't indescribable be better?), it set me to thinking about God's love.

Parents who have lost a child may find themselves questioning God or their own faith -- I know I did. I was angry at God for allowing Ethan to die, full of questions and rocked that my prayers and faith had not led to his recovery from addiction. I was so certain that it was just a matter of time, that God would put the right people in his life or open the door that would allow him to see what his life had become. It was not that I stopped believing in God -- the whole idea is incomprehensible to me -- it was that it felt like He didn't really care.

Yet eventually this terrible loss took me to different place. In this place I feel God's love in a way I don't think I ever comprehended it before.

We're not perfect and from the time Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, we could never be. Yet God wants us to be with Him. Sure, it would be easy to say that everyone got a free pass, but then what would be the point of life and what kind of souls would we possess if we'd never faced any challenges or had to make choices? So from the beginning, He had a plan. To show His love, He would forgive our imperfections. So that we could understand how hard that was, it had to involve a sacrifice. For a time He allowed lesser sacrifices, but He knew that a time was coming when the sacrifice had to be huge. It was.

He sacrificed His son, Jesus, for us. He sent him out of his eternal presence to earth to live as a mortal man, He allowed men to beat him and crucify him. In order for Jesus to die, He had to sever for a while that eternal connection.

I've lost a son. I know the pain of a child's death. Would I let my son die for a bunch of people who didn't even know or care about him? Soldiers' families do it every day. Would I let him die for people who might care? Law enforcement officers' parents do it all too often. Would I let him die for someone I loved? Maybe, if he were willing, but just imagining that choice brings tears to my eyes.

Would I have let him die if it had been within my power to stop it? No way in this world or the next.

God did all those things.

Had He even thought it, the crowds crying for Jesus' death would have dropped dead, the soldiers would have crumbled to ash, Jesus would have soared back to His side. He could have stopped it, but out of love for people who would one day realize the sacrifice and people who never would even acknowledge it, He didn't. Jesus died for our forgiveness. There is nothing within our power that could ever equal that sacrifice; all we have to do is believe and accept it.

There are people who lose a child and say, "How can a God who loves me do this?" I have been that person at times. But I've become the person who says, "How could God love me that much?"

With all the mistakes and baggage I've accumulated through my life, how could He love me enough to send Jesus? How could He love any of us enough to accept, even for a little while, this pain?

Sure, He knew how it was going to turn out. He knew Jesus would triumph over death and rise from the grave. Don't we know the same thing?

I know that Jesus' victory is Ethan's as well and that while Jesus was in the grave for three days, Ethan flew from his body into the arms of the God who loved him enough to make the sacrifice of His own son.

No, that doesn't heal my grief. I'm still floored by it sometimes. I still cry and my arms ache to hold my son, my ears strain for the sound of his voice.

But sometimes when I cry, like now, it's not because of my loss. It's because I finally understand how much God loves me and the rest of humanity.

Perhaps, after all, it was an unspeakable gift He gave.

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

There's a well known saying I've found to be true.

What doesn't kill us does make us stronger.

Most of us go through life with a mental list of the things we don't believe we could survive. The list is generally the things we fear most -- not the phobias that make us laugh nervously in a crowd, but the things we don't talk about, the things we see happen to other people and say a silent prayer of thanksgiving because they aren't happening to us.

That list might include cancer, debilitating injury or disease, living with addiction, and loss in myriad forms.

For a parent, that list would be topped by the death of your child.

It's the darkest place you can imagine going, the thing you shy away from facing. When it happens to a friend, you struggle with what to do and say and may even try to avoid it because your own fears drive you to deny that reality. Even when it happens to a stranger, you feel some internal tug.

That's the world where I used to live. It's a place where my absolute worst fear, despite my son's addiction and all of the darkness and pain that came along with it, was still something I could not imagine facing.

I'd faced addiction in people I loved before. I'd faced lumps and biopsies. I'd escaped domestic violence. I'd buried my dearest pet (and hardly eaten for a week). I didn't realize each of these survivals was preparing me, making me stronger.

Then Ethan died.

My worst nightmare came true. My reality shifted from what I had known to living what had been unimaginable. There was no path to follow, no plan for how to survive. It was the thing that I didn't believe there was a way to survive, not in a way that saw life go on with any degree of normalcy.

Yet, the next morning I got up again. One day at a time I accepted a new reality. Somehow despite all the pain and the sense of being lost in a dark place inside much of the time, days passed, then weeks, months, and finally a year.

The thing I ran from became my reality and changed who I am.

It's a oxymoron that losing Ethan made me stronger, but at the same time chipped away that tough veneer I showed the world, that professional objectivity I'd spent 25 years as a journalist perfecting. Now, instead of running from someone else's pain, I'm more likely to cry for and with them. I want to help them bear it because having gotten this far, I know I'm stronger and that one day, in their own time, they will be stronger, too.

I want people who have lost a child, regardless of the age or circumstance, to realize none of us are alone in what we are feeling. Whether it's a tragedy that rallies the community for a few weeks, or one that no one knows how to talk about, what we're left feeling is the same broken sense of being. We're still mothers and father and aunts and uncles and grandparents, it's just that our children aren't where we can touch them any more. They live every day in our hearts and through faith we will see them again someday.

Now when I hear of a child dying, my prayer is for those left behind and it's usually said with tears in my eyes because I know what they are going through. Knowing that the things I needed to hear were the words only other parents who had lost children could say, I try to reach out whenever I can. I try to pass on the love I felt when my friends who had lost children came to my house after Ethan's death, when strangers hugged me with tears in their eyes.

I still like to pretend I've had my share of pain and that life has been as dark for me as it will ever be, but I also realize there is no quota to be met. Bad things could still happen and all the fears that I still carry for my loved ones and myself could become real all too easily. There are still things I don't think I can survive, but sometimes there's a part of me that says it's more of a matter of not wanting to live through than it is inability to survive. And perhaps that's what it was all along.

A Happier New Year

Happy New Year.

Last year those words rang as false to me as the words of a TV evangelist promising physical and spiritual wealth if only we mail in a check.

This year, I realize there is the possibility of happiness again.

The thought hit me while curled at the end of the love seat with a dog on my lap as I contemplated a Facebook news feed full of holiday greetings. I was suddenly mindful of the tender swath across my abdomen and thought that a year ago I would never have imagined being exactly who and where I was today.

A year ago the reality of Ethan's death was still something that stood by the bed to greet me each morning. Every day I had to embrace the new reality of my life, opening my heart for what still felt like it should be a death blow for me as well. Laughter, and even a smile, felt like a betrayal of my son. How could I share holiday greetings when my world was so torn apart? How could I go on living, making new memories, finding a different future than the one I'd always believed in?

Last year, Happy New Year felt like a lie I could not abide. Kinder new year was the most I hoped to find.

Yet against the odds, it seems happy found me anyway. Not with the tossing out of the calendar, but in the days and weeks that followed.

I discovered I was not an island, the only person who had ever felt my kind of loss, but instead just a mountain peak. As the tide of my grief subsided, I found I was part of a chain of mountains connected to others who felt the same pain. There were friends with whom I never expected to share this bond, and virtual strangers I met in cyberspace.

Our shared pain transcended circumstance and distance. We connected through blogs and text messages and late night Facebook messaging and phone calls. Sometimes the grief returned like a high tide and sometimes like a tsunami, but I learned to reach across the waves to the other mountains and hold on.

I learned that when others offered to talk it wasn't the platitudes that are often offered to the grieving. They called and sent cards and messages and I accepted that they were sincere and when I found myself teetering on an emotional ledge, I learned to pick up the phone.

I discovered there are other kinds of grief and loss that give me common ground with people who haven't lost a child, and I learned to accept hugs and comfort and friendship where I found it.

I struggled with good habits and bad, and found the long peaceful walks I'd enjoyed for so long were one thing I could not endure. But a needy dog with more issues than friends meant I couldn't quit, even when I had no desire to go. I lost two of my support networks -- my Zumba studio and my church -- but I kept dancing and worshipping and found that while I missed old routines, new ones weren't always bad.

I found that airing my grief helped me work through it and that taking time to focus on good things helped me recognize there were still reasons to smile. I found songs to make me cry and others that made me smile and sometimes one song that would do both. I opened myself to seeing Ethan everywhere, and after a while it gave me pleasure instead of pain.

I took care of myself, sometimes the hardest thing to do when life demanded so much. I struggled to balance my desire to withdraw from life with my need to keep living, and gradually the living and moving won out.

Now the waves of grief are more likely to lap around my feet than crash over my head, but the sound of the ocean never fades. I know the shore of loss is where I'll pass the remainder of my days, but I no longer feel I'll be drowned there.

Instead I feel hopeful that happy will continue to find me as long as I'm willing to see it. A new year full of change and possibility has begun. I never would have imagined myself here, yet here I am, embracing the life God has given me to lead, becoming another mountain to those still lost in the flood of grief.

Life and Change is a Choice after Loss

Three weeks ago I had a modified abdominoplasty -- a mini tummy tuck for those unacquainted with plastic surgery lingo.

During the year since my son died, I've taken care of myself in ways I had never done before. Putting a period on his life reminded me that there will someday be an end to mine, and I don't want to have regrets for the things I could have done. Even if I don't have time for regrets, I want time to enjoy the things I want in life, whether it's weeks months or years.

So there's a convertible in the driveway, even though I haven't driven it in weeks due to cold weather. There's a hot tub in the back yard where I regularly relax with a glass of wine, looking up at the cold winter stars. I had my eyeliner tattooed on my eyes a few months ago. Last spring I spent four glorious days at the Outer Banks with my family. One to three times a week I splurge on a drive to town to workout for an hour or two. And now there's a long scar across my abdomen where I've said goodbye to a physical attribute that has bothered me for years.

I know we all handle grief and depression differently, and I've tried to think each decision through and separate a temporary feel better from something I really wanted.

There have been times when I've rushed into things myself, although I've since learned that big decisions shouldn't be made while dealing with grief or depression. Years ago I fell and broke my right wrist badly and wound up depressed, especially after the convertible I had at the time came back from the mechanic with cosmetic damage. Oh, and I couldn't drive it because it was a five-speed. Rather than waiting until I was well and taking the issue up with the mechanic and tow company that had caused the problem, I traded it for a loss for a car I drove only a few months and hated virtually the entire time. Don't, I've learned. Don't rush into something to make you feel better.

So I haven't.

But at the same time, if there's something I know I've wanted for a long time, I've decided to make it happen if possible. I've scrimped and saved and planned and things have fallen into place.

I knew from the time I sold my previous convertible that I would want another one when it became feasible. When I first read that it was possible to have permanent makeup tattooed on, I wanted eyeliner because I can make it and feel good if I'm wearing eyeliner. The Outer Banks has been my favorite vacation getaway since the first time I went, even though I had not made it back in a decade. The hot tub was the closest to a spur of the moment purchase I've made, having not had the opportunity to enjoy one very often, but I've used it enough to prove it was a good luxury choice.

The abdominoplasty was probably the hardest to embrace and thankfully most people, including my husband, would not have said I needed one.

After birthing two 9-pound babies, two abdominal surgeries with resulting scars and tucks, and losing 20-plus pounds in the last decade, I wasn't happy with the way my skin fit. It bothered me in yoga poses, in a bathing suit or jeans, or even when I simply encountered the unwelcome bulge. The more I exercised, the fitter I became, the more I hated it. It seemed, however, that I would carry my little roll to the grave because I couldn't entertain the idea of plastic surgery long enough to find a doctor or make an appointment.

As it turned out I didn't need to. A small skin cancer on my leg sent me to a plastic surgeon to arrange removal and while there I asked about the loose skin on my stomach. I quickly learned it wasn't as expensive as I thought for a mini procedure and that it could be performed without general anesthesia (a deal breaker). Before I left I had a quote for the costs and something to ponder. When things are meant to happen, I firmly believe they will.

I spent the next week doing research and considering the cost. I watched YouTube videos and read reviews. I talked to my husband. Then I called and scheduled the surgery and the presurgical visit and began making payments. I had my visit with a nurse who took measurements and talked with my about what to expect from surgery and recovery.

Then one Friday morning my husband took a vacation day and drove me to Winston where he waited while surgery was performed. It was as bad as YouTube made it look, although not so much painful as much as I knew what they were doing and liposuction (a small amount was included) is brutal at best.

The first two weeks of healing seemed to take forever. The last week has been wonderful. At no point have I regretted it and my only debate was whether to share it.

I decided this changing of my skin, so to speak, was part of the journey of losing Ethan. Had I not lost him, I would have continued to deny that I deserved it. I would have continued to be uncomfortable in my own skin, simply because there were other needs and wants.

Because I lost Ethan and made the decision to live, I want to live fully. I want to do so in a body that is aging, but aging well because I take care of it inside and out, and one that I feel fits me, however long I inhabit it. I want to exercise and dance and run and enjoy the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. I want to eat things I shouldn't, and things I should. I want to hand money to homeless people and shelter stray dogs. I want to listen to baby talk and feel the wonderful sensation of my grandchildren's arms embracing me. I want to watch them grow and try to be a person they can emulate. I want to say the right things, and sometimes the things no one wants to hear because they need to be said.

I want to reach out to other mothers, or fathers, who wake up to the same unimaginable loss I've endured and help them realize that they are not alone. I want them to understand it's OK to grieve and be sad and feel that life isn't what you expected it to be, but at the same time realize that living is a choice to make every day and that the rest of our lives doesn't have to be about grieving.

It can also be about moving forward and doing the things you've denied yourself. Because in my loss I've realized not to take tomorrow for granted, to seize the opportunities and take care of things today instead of tomorrow, and that the things that need taking care of aren't always someone or something else -- sometimes what needs care the most is me.