Grief is weird. It shows up differently for everyone but it’s
one of those things that we simply don’t talk about – like politics, religion,
or when you have toilet paper stuck to your shoe after you leave the ladies’
room. In my case, grief is a lot like underwear. It’s a constant – I won’t
leave home without it – and while there are long stretches of time when I don’t
really think about my underwear, there are those days when I’m plagued by a
visible panty line. Sometimes my giant granny panties get wedged up my backside
at the very worst possible moments of the day, and I can’t really concentrate
on anything until I get my panties out of a wad. On days when I wake up on the
fat side of the bed, I’m acutely aware of how tight my panties are and I am distracted
by them all day long. I have old, faded panties where the elastic is about
ready to expire that I can’t bring myself to throw away, and I have a couple of
pairs of fancy panties too, but most of my underwear is brought to me courtesy
of the very nice folks at Fruit of the Loom and can be easily procured at just
about any discount store in the nation. My grief, on the other hand, didn’t
cost me a dime and while I’ve tried to return it, refund it, and leave it
behind, it sticks to me like a reliable pair of high-waisted briefs.
For 16 years, I’ve worn grief under my clothes and deep
inside my heart. Like my underwear, you probably never saw my grief (I’m no Britney Spears) but I
assure you, it was there. My grief didn’t travel alone, bringing her friends
guilt and shame along with for the ride, which may explain why my pants have
felt so tight. Ha! It wasn’t the cookies – it was the grief! If you think grief
is a heavy burden to carry, let me introduce you to guilt and shame. Those two
bitches refused to leave my side, and they like traveling by wagon, so in
addition to having grief crawl up my ass, I’ve been dragging an invisible wagon
of guilt and shame everywhere I go. If you’ve ever wondered about my stooped
shoulders and lousy posture, wonder no more. Some days, when the grief didn’t
give me a wedgie, I’d forget about the guilt and shame wagon until I found
myself tripping over it and falling face-first into the abyss. I replay the
same stories in my head over and over again, trying desperately to write a
different ending – but I can’t rewrite history. Everyone dies. I understand
that. But when someone so young is taken from us before he has had a chance to
truly live; when his death was self-inflicted; and when you tried but failed to
save him from himself, you’ll experience a different kind of grief. You’ll feel
the absence in your heart profoundly.
For 16 years, I have felt tremendous guilt and shame about
Nate’s suicide. It’s a weight I’ve carried daily. The guilt and shame have
wreaked havoc on my life. I’ve lost friends. Relationships. Guilt and shame
caused me to let my guard down so low that I allowed predators into my life and
into my home. Spoiler alert: that didn’t end well. Guilt and shame have led me
to make terrible decisions and dangerous choices. I rationalized it all away
saying, “I let Nate down. I won’t ever do that to another living soul again.”
But here’s the deal. I couldn’t even save myself, much less anyone else. I
faked it. I tried. I showed up. I did stuff. Maybe you saw my underwear
sometimes, maybe you didn’t. For 16 years, I thought this was my destiny – to haul
a shame wagon and to spend the rest of my days making amends for failing Nate.
Every day, guilt woke me up in the morning, whispering, “Do you think he’s
proud of what he sees?” And every day, I thought to myself, “Not yet – but I’ll
keep on keeping on.”
While I was resigned to my fate, I didn’t stop trying to
find a better path. I went to therapy, but therapy merely opened my eyes to the
fact that I have even more issues than I was aware of. And I’m just not ready
to sit down with four year old me to face those. I tried meditation, but I
couldn’t quiet my mind and I was wildly annoyed by the sounds coming out of my
fellow meditators . . . snot sucking; stomachs growling; wheezing; and someone
even farted. I turned to the church. I went to mass. I read everything I could get my hands on –
and I learned that lots of people felt that their deceased loved ones were
communicating with them through dreams. I prayed desperately for a sign, for a
dream, for something. And for 16 years, I got nothing. Ten years ago, I went to
an energy healer who took $300 of my money and told me that Nate couldn’t
communicate with me because he was a toddler now. Sure, lady. I saw psychics;
had my tarot cards read; and I did just about anything imaginable to find a way
to reduce or eliminate the burden of guilt and shame.
I kept getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of
the other. I met a man who didn’t care about my shame wagon. We fell in love
and married. I somehow built a career. I celebrated birthdays. I visited the
cemetery. I published some blogs that 11 people read. Not to brag, but I
accomplished a lot in spite of the guilt and shame I dragged around behind me
every single day. I got used to it, and I sort of assumed that this was my destiny,
and that’s okay. My guilt and shame aren’t real problems – there are people who
are struggling to put food on the table; people tortured by mental illness;
people fighting for their lives. My sadness is hardly a debilitating condition.
According to the experts, I’d reached the “acceptance” phase of the grief cycle.
Awesome. (Note: just because you’re at acceptance doesn’t mean you stop wearing
panties.)
And then, a couple of weeks ago, something happened. Just
like I’ve done every other night for almost 17 years, I put on my jammies and
laid my head on the pillow to sleep. But this time, I had a dream. The details
of the dream have faded now, and they aren’t important anyway. In my dream, I
was looking everywhere for Nate. I was searching high and low, stopping everyone
I encountered to ask if they had seen him. I finally found him, in the basement
of our high school (!), where he was working away on some kind of art project.
I was so relieved to see him, I ran over and exclaimed, “I’ve been looking
everywhere for you! Where have you been?” He looked up at me and said, “I didn’t
know you were looking for me. Please – stop worrying about me. I’ve been here
the entire time.” I woke up shortly thereafter.
I’m a heavy sleeper and if I dream, I don’t realize it most
of the time. I can count on my fingers the number of dreams I remember in the
last two decades, so a dream that stuck with me after waking was a mini-miracle
in and of itself. But this was the dream I’ve been waiting 16 years for. I woke
up and for the first time, I didn’t trip over a giant shame wagon at the foot
of my bed. My grief suddenly felt less like underwear and more like a bracelet –
something I might wear and admire from time to time, but no longer a constant
staple of my wardrobe, hidden far away from the naked eye. Nate is part of my
story and part of my journey, so I will never close the chapter on missing him
. . . and now, I have permission to put the guilt down. He’s been here all
along. He doesn’t want me to worry. And it’s okay to move on.
It’s amazing to be freed of the shackles of my guilt and
shame, but it’s also a little disconcerting. It’s like discovering that Fruit
of the Loom is no longer making my preferred style of granny panties and
switching to Hanes Her Way (been there, done that). It takes time to get used
to this new underwear and this new way of showing up in the world. In fact, I’ve
been plagued with this restless energy ever since. Who am I without this grief
holding me in place? What will I do now that I am free from guilt and shame? A
friend asked me how I will design my life now that the guilt and shame are a
part of my past. That is the million dollar question – and I’ll answer it
real-time as this new chapter unfolds. Watch this space.
© 2016 Princess D
