Grief Work
My son died a year ago. He was one of 15 children aged 1–5 in California who was able to donate his heart to another child. The anniversary of his death will always coincide with Father’s Day, a bittersweet time of year for me. This story is one I wrote and shared last week on Facebook exactly a year after he drowned. With the encouragement of friends and family, I have decided to share my thoughts on grief. If this story touches you, reach out and share it with another. Grieving is hidden business but it needn’t be.
Tuesday, June 9, 2016.
Tuesday morning this week. Quiet house. David is sleeping in. I’m sitting at the kitchen with my laptop and a cup of coffee. Typing and crying.
Grief work is hard. It takes its toll on my body. I lose the power to make hard choices. In its void I have picked up bad habits. It’s not that I’m not careful. It’s that taking care of myself when I have a perseverant thought is literally the last thing on my mind. I eat too much. I sleep too little. In a year, I look different, more sullen, grayer, frumpier. I feel different. My shoulders feel heavier. My gut has grown. My joints ache. My mind wanders. Where I should be avoiding burritos instead I avoid the scale. And yet, grief is work. Grief’s product is connectedness. I’ll explain.
Being in grief is a lot like having your bell rung. There’s a white noise in the brain that prevents senses working properly. It’s hard for new memories to take hold. Over the course of the year, I’ve gotten countless cards, Facebook messages, and flowers but I would be hard pressed to tell you who from. It’s all a blur.
This morning I’m sitting on the toilet deep in thought. After about 5 minutes in a daze I realize that I haven’t made any progress and snap out of it. I bear down. Nothing. I’ll come back later. Shit will happen. I get up only to discover that I have in fact crapped. When did that happen? I ask myself. Honestly I have no memory of it. My senses are gone.
In the tintinnabulation of grief it’s hard to hear new thoughts. I lose concentration in its din. Monkey mind takes over. Why did this happen? Could I have done something to prevent it? Where did my boy go? What do I do with the leftovers?
The questions are endless. Few answers suffice. Action is the only salve.
Staying busy has a palliative effect. Being close with your loved ones is essential. After Will died, the bond between me, Stephanie and David in the household has strengthened. David is remarkably resilient. He makes friends easily. He finds fun easily. He is a force for living. Meanwhile Stephanie and I were swept up in the power of our communities. Stephanie has joined The Thursday Club, started painting, and assists with the arts program at school for the kids Will’s age. He would have been in Pre-K this year.
Next year Steph will be the VP of the school’s parent foundation KidsFirst and David will enter 3rd grade.
For David, he’s covered. He has people caring for him, therapists, teachers, coaches, friends. The new school principal is our old friend, which is its own blessing. He is active in sports, too. His soccer and baseball schedules keep his mind occupied. He’s made new friendships and deepened others.
Me? I play soccer and have resumed normal efforts in the startup world here in San Diego. I consulted for a while but now I have gone full-time into building my new company, which is where I feel most at home outside of home. Sleep, eat, love, work, play. Repeat. Love in the middle.
Talking helps too. I am never sad to hear my son’s name. It makes me sad of course, but hearing his name helps me stay connected with him. If I get too distracted or focus my attention too much on myself grief itself can become a distraction. Hearing his name brings me out of the daze and back into a safe space where my love for him is better focused.
The other day I got a call from a friend I hadn’t seen in over 20 years. We had recently re-connected over social media. I confess I thought it was strange that he called out of the blue after so long. We share common interests and common career arcs and had much to talk about given the length of our hiatus. We talked for 30 minutes before I told him I had to go. He spoke up about his true intent for calling. He, too, had lost a son. “I watched him die,” he said. And I fumbled. I told him I was sorry and that I was here for him if he wanted to talk. I forgot to ask him what his son’s name was. He just wanted to talk with another dad like him.
Writing has also helped. It has helped me capture a feeling I have that I don’t want to forget. I say feeling because that’s where I store my memories. Always did. You know how smells bring you right back to a moment in time? Every sensation is like that too. It can be recalled if encoded.
I heard the voice in my head this morning after so many days trying to force myself to write. It started with one phrase. Then the the next one came. Soon the phrases created their own own momentum, their own force. The words moved me. Here I am.
Listening is grief work. A few months ago, a new friend and I were waiting for a meeting to begin and we were alone in a conference room and he confessed to me that he had been reading my stuff on Facebook and that it helped him expose the grief he had been having about his son who almost died as an infant. He started crying. It was out of context for our surroundings. I just let it happen. I put my hand on his shoulder and asked him about his son. I told him I was grateful that he shared his feelings with me. It was an important moment for us both. The moment made me realize that while I had faith my words would reach the right people for the right reasons, that this grief work of my own yields dividends; it heartens me to know that people notice, that they process their own feelings and experiences through my words and whatever I might say might also frame the turmoil within in a way that makes the burden of grief tolerable yet another day. I love it when I can listen. It assures me I, myself, am being heard.
The work connects.
Stephanie and I have turned toward each other. That’s our phrase for it. Tragedies have a tendency, we are told, for splitting couples. That didn’t happen for us. We often talk about our lives before Will’s death as two ships passing in the night. Now we are in the same boat.
Turning toward each other has resulted in better everything for us. Better awareness, better intimacy, better priorities, better communication, better trust. I remember writing about how Stephanie’s grief face — all puffy with tears and drooping with fatigue — was the most beautiful face I could know. I look at her like she is a carving from the same block. We have been fitted back together, worn and imperfect. She’s the love of my life. Our love produced David and Will. There’s nobody in the world who gets me like she does. Now more than ever we are fixed to each other. Granite boulders tossed by a flood onto a canyon floor, grief.
For David it’s harder. We remind ourselves that he’s 8. His brother died when he was 7. We always treated David like an adult, talking with him like he didn’t need to be coddled. His verbal capacity at such a young age was astounding. The kid has a brain for talking. As a parent you feel like you’re talking with an adult. Now with Will’s death it’s becoming more important for him to be seen as a kid.
For David, going right back to school where people have cared for him all year as helped. He has great teachers and friends. The new principal is our old friend, which is its own blessing. Soccer and baseball are a blessing, too.
We took a break from sports last weekend. David attended a grief camp for kids who have lost a loved one. David goes to a grief group twice a month in Liberty Station where he gets to share his experience with other kids who have lost their moms, dads, brothers or sisters. It’s a fun class for him that he looks forward to. It’s also a private experience for him and we honor the fact that with his friends and therapists he has privacy. He is allowed to confide in others and keep those secrets which we feel helps reinforce our belief that safety is essential in therapy. We won’t pry.
When we went to Monterey for Memorial Day weekend David had gotten in trouble and his punishment was no electronics. In other words, no iPad for an 8-hour one-way car ride. So what did we do? We listened to podcasts as a family. Same when we came back. The kid had so many questions. He was rapt. He soaked it all in.
I worry about that, David seeing and hearing everything without fail; David having an enormous capacity for communication and yet holding it all in.
We try to talk openly about our feelings in the house. We show him it’s OK to cry. All the same we have short tempers when our energy is low and he tests our patience. I worry that we’re hurting him more with our sadness and frustration. Yet hardest part about being his dad is remembering to have fun. I feel bad for him because I was never that goofy or playful with him before and becoming that now is harder than ever with this new grief-weight.
When Will was in the hospital he had these electrodes on his head that told us what was going on in his brain, such as they could, squiggly lines on a black and white screen. At first the lines were chaotic with no apparent rhyme or reason. Every once in a while there’d be a massive coordinate blip which was probably a brief siezure or something. Sometimes you could hold his hand and there would be a slight dent in the noise. Talking to him, in the beginning, had an effect too.
Over time it became too exhausting to carry all the conversation myself. I enlisted the support of our friends and family. One night Steph and I needed a break from the ICU and we left Eric with Will. Eric is my best friend growing up. His sister died when we were thirteen. I was there in the hospital with him the night she died. Eric read all night to Will. Harry Potter and the box score from Cleveland Indians games. When we returned the next morning the lines had flattened out entirely. Eric was heavy with sadness and fell into me. We hugged and cried some more. We knew what that meant It was the second time he and I had seen these signs. Will was winding down and hard as we tried there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
In the hospital our grief work was all-encompassing. We kept vigil with our friends who were showing up in droves. We tried to keep our spirits up. With each new arrival of a friend from near and far we would have a massive hug and great cry together and then make the walk to Will’s room so they could have some time talking with him and holding his hand too. For those staying the night, we’d make them go sleep in our room at the Ronald McDonald house. And vice versa. We were there for five long nights.
When Will was on life support we had machines to tell us what we needed to know. Now we have emotions. The emotions come before the thoughts. The thoughts come in bursts too fleeting to record. And then the next thing you know it’s sunrise and the voices in your head start talking. The grief work is endless. The need to connect, tireless.
Cleveland. The end of winter. 2016. Night Town with Steph, Kirk and Sarah for dinner and an evening with John McCutcheon, a folk singer I’ve never heard of. Our reason for being here in Cleveland is to spend time with Kirk and Sarah, to catch an opening week game against the Red Sox, and to show Stephanie where I grew up. We’re in only for a couple of days so we’re making time to visit the Rock Hall of Fame and ride around town to show Steph where I used to roll. Everything is smaller than I remember. The roads all make sense now. How long it takes to get from one part of town to the other seems a lot shorter.
The game has snowed out, but the babysitter is on her way so we scramble to find something fitting for the evening. Kirk suggests a few things but nothing sounds as good as walking down Fairmont to eat some steaks and stumble home warm, full, buzzed on Old Fashions. It’s a packed house. We get there in time to snag a table off stage left. It’s a small venue.
On the walk there we tread on freshly fallen snow, which is dense and wet and makes the slate sidewalk a little perilous. Dusk is turning to night and I’m regretting not packing a scarf. I’ve borrowed a hat from Kirk.
Night Town is like I remember it. It’s a classic bar with an unsophisticated menu dressed in sophisticated names. Steaks and stiff drinks named after literary titans; I pick the thing with rye. It’s The Bard for me and a couple of Joyce’s for the girls. Kirk is in rare form, anticipating a night of sated appetites. We order a second round with our meals. I’m a sucker for lamb. The girls share an entree and a salad. Round three is on its way. We’re starting to get loud when the music starts.
The first song floors me. Coming out of nowhere I’m drawn into McCutcheon’s Woody Guthrie school of singer-songwriter-storyteller experience. He’s my dad’s age, bald, fit and rehearsed. His stories tie each of his songs together without pause and he moves fluidly between instruments on the stage, the hammered dulcimer being his claim.
He starts off on the banjo singing “Little Birdie.” By the end of the first verse I am in tears. I look around to our party and it’s hit them too. We have onlookers. We don’t hide the fact that we’re all mourning hard and it’s strangely comforting to do this in public. Music is a wonderful medium that way.
LITTLE BIRDIE
Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes you fly so high?
It’s because I am a true little bird
And I do not fear to die.
Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your wing so blue?
It’s because I’ve been a-grievin’,
Grieving after you.
Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your head so red?
Well, after all that I’ve been through,
It’s a wonder I ain’t dead.
Little birdie, little birdie,
Come sing to me a song.
I’ve a short while to be here
And a long time to be gone.
— — Here you can watch Pete Seeger sing his version of the old bluegrass standard. It’s similar.
Wednesday morning. I’ve just finished an hour and half of research trying to find John McCutcheon singing his version of “Little Birdie”. Steph comes home to me lying on the couch with my phone on my chest playing all the versions I could find by other singers. They’re on repeat and I am in tears again, feeling so deeply connected with my boy.
Grief work is work. I have been writing this piece in my mind for a few weeks now. Setting down to write the piece has been the part where I’ve had to dig in. The words aren’t coming. I can’t keep the hot embers stoked. I write when the fire’s hot and when it’s not I have a habit of cursing the cold. I can wait for it or I can work for it.
Yesterday I had a conversation with Ken — my business partner and another grieving dad — about how I was bracing for the year anniversary of Will’s death. It’s been a frequent conversation between Steph and me. I hadn’t said out loud yet what I was feeling, which is this: I am bracing for a hard fall. Granted, the hardest fall was a year ago and I don’t know what I’m bracing for anymore. I have few fears now. I don’t even worry about my own death anymore. My biggest fears are losing another Ioved one. I fear David is going to be fucked up for life by this. I am not worried about an anniversary.
Nevertheless, I haven’t been digging in. I’ve been bracing.
This morning I started researching the song “Little Birdie” because I needed to connect with that night in Cleveland with Steph, Kirk and Sarah. I needed to dig in to those tears.
Before today I had been planning on taking Thursday off, as I usually do, Therapy Thursday. But it would be business as usual the rest of the week. As I was leaving the office Tuesday Ken, recalling our earlier conversation, said “Don’t come in tomorrow. Take the rest of the week off.” Good thing he did. I needed the push. I dug in last night and came to that realization myself. I needed to give myself more space this week than usual. To do the grief work I have been avoiding lately.
I’ll still go to therapy tomorrow, the anniversary. Then we’re going out as a family to Dave & Busters so we can get some play time in with D after school. We have decided it’s going to be a night of pure fun. We won’t remind David it’s been a year unless he asks.
Next Monday we’ll go see the Padres. This weekend we’ll be doing more of our normal routine which involves being in crowds and acting as if nothing in particular is on our minds. I’ll wear sunglasses and the Albi0n club tee shirt and cheer the loudest at D’s tournament. The monkey mind asks, Am I leaving enough time for the work?
My therapist has always encouraged my writing. As I expressed to her my lack of ability to write lately she said in so many words, “Put aside the audience and just write.” She encouraged me to journal, which I did last night. And then the words came this morning. The words came as breaths in my ear, indefatigable palpitations, birdsongs. I thought of my head on Will’s chest, when the machines did his breathing for him, his heart worked on its own.
The words, then, when they came, connected me to you. The work is working. Maybe I will find an audience, too.
Sunday, March 13, 2016. San Diego. My birthday. A beautiful, sunny day. I am reading outside on the patio with a cup of coffee. It’s mid-morning when Danielle calls, as she always does, without fail. She forgets that I’m a year older than she is, wishing me a happy 40th. We laugh about that. Then we talk about our lives halfway across the world. I ask her when the best time to visit Tel Aviv would be. She says October. David and I will go this year.
One of the best things I’ve done for my grief is to go be with friends. As I trace back the last year I can point to dots on the map and inasmuch as I do also press a deep stamp of friendship into it.
London at the end of March was great. Seeing the old school gang for a brief moment one night over beers on a busy Friday happy hour in Covent Garden before a show. Then the following evening drinks again this time at our hotel where Esko and Shaleem visited. Shaleem had such a touching story he shared with me on Facebook I wanted to re-connect. Shaleem drove down from Manchester. Esko drove out from Cardiff. We had drinks. Shaleem brought flowers for Steph. Shaleem did not drink and left after an hour or so to drive back home.
Later we had dinner with Esko. David was being hard but we managed. We all ordered carbonara at an Italian place which turned out shitty. But we also ordered a bottle of wine and we talked about trauma. Esko had watched his friend get blown to bits when he was in the army and the response he got from his superiors was to suck it up. He has PTSD now which we share with him. Traumas and triggers. I cried with him about his friend’s death and assured him as much as I could that he carries his friend in his heart just as I do Will in mine. That will never be enough but it will be something. Something to dig for when he needs it.
We made new friends in Cape Cod. The Hoits — Nancy and Roger, their children and their grand children — a gift from Tsedale and Jerry old friends of ours who have since moved from San Diego to New York but have a beautiful old windmill house on one of the many open waterways in Cape Cod. We flew out there with D to be alone in our grief early last summer. Then Nancy called and we made plans to come to their house. We got wrapped up in their love. It blind-sided us, this generosity. It was so important; to make new friends; to be loved and cared for by strangers; to accept gifts in the midst of so fresh a trauma. I wish now that Esko had felt something similar sooner than I was able to hear his story and share his pain.
Grief work is also compassion. I’m learning this as I go on. Everyone carries their own pain. Life is suffering. The survival tropes are plenty in the age of animated gifs and Instagram. The last thing I need is another quote, or “God has a plan” well-wisher. And it would be easy to turn my back on them. To be angry. But I won’t. Pain is pain and, like all feelings, real. From my POV it has been nice to be a source for compassion in either direction. I have to remind myself to be more compassionate and humble all the time. It’s work to not let others’ actions inflict damage and vice versa to be sensitive enough to know when your own needs impose on another.
In December Stephanie and I visited Vietnam. I fired a client but kept the business trip. We spent a little too much time in Saigon but it was nice to stretch my perspective for a while. On the trip two things happened that I carry in my heart. The first was sharing tears with our host one day, a chef, who had also lost a son. She had no idea about our story. She seemed reluctant to talk about her son until I reassured her it was ok. I think she was caught off guard by our compassion. I know I was.
On another day a dragon fly flew along with us as we biked along the narrow paved elevated paths webbing the Mekong delta. It flashed me back to being in Sayulita with Cheri and Kyle last August. I remember being in the pool, looking up at the sky, arms outstretched on the edge. I closed my eyes and then opened them and saw above me a dragonfly hovering. Will. Or so we’ve been told. Or so we like to believe. Or so we say. For any number of reasons dragonflies are an instantaneous connection with our boy, a reminder to speak out loud to him because who knows maybe what’s in your heart needs to hear things said.
— —
New Years. Salt Lake City. We flew there to be with Johnny and Sharon, dear friends who spoke at Will’s memorial. We don’t get to see them much, but the boys loved them and their dog Flash who didn’t mind their grabbing at his fur.
Johnny’s brother Mike lives there and has bought three contiguous houses on the block. They live in the middle house. One one side, his mother-in-law. On the other, a guest house, which they had recently purchased and were getting ready for AirBNB. I wanted the trip so we could start a regular tradition. David should learn how to ski and snowboard and we should make a tighter bond with the Bates’ who are now like family. Their three children brought David in while Phoenix and Mike made us meals and showed us the funky side of SLC which, to my surprise, is actually a thing. Sharon is pregnant and we arrived with Will’s lovie, Spotsie to give to them. One night we all gather in the Bates’ living room and present Johnny and Sharon this gift and it hurts so much to give Will’s things away but it also means so much to us that it would go to them. John and I have had this conversation before that the act of having a baby is an act of faith. It means that you believe in this world. And I want him to understand that we believe in him and Sharon. We can’t hold back our tears as we present this gift to them and after a brief moment Mike and Phoenix join us in a big group hug cry thing. We’re all a lovely mess.
When I met Stephanie I was married. Then after 9/11 I looked around and didn’t like what I saw. I saw the futility of maintaining a marriage I didn’t believe in. I called for a divorce and the next week I was asking Stephanie out. When we met it was a year before, at work, and it was love at first sight. When Steph saw my ring whatever hopes we might have had instantly dissolved into a puddle of unrequitement. That is until we screwed with what’s right and followed our guts. Immediately after calling for a divorce I called on the one woman I knew made me happy by just being her. We had worked together for a year and formed a friendship — purely, honorably, platonically — and yet couldn’t fight back our instincts which the governed much of the next 16 years.
When I asked her out she looked sideways at me as if to say, “So soon?” To which my answer was a screwed up face, “I’m hopeless I know. But you make me happy. I’m done being sad, mad and tired. I wanna go out and have fun. For the rest of my life. With you.” Stephanie also happened to be the one woman I made happy by just being me.
Years later and here we are governed still by instincts. The voices in our heads, the touched heart. Grief work is hope. The heart wants and sometimes it speaks loudly enough for the brain to relent. I learned that on 9/11. Grief work is heart work.
Grief works because time works. I don’t care what Elon Musk says, there is only one reality and it has certain immutable laws. The arrow of time goes forward. Heavy objects attract. Rain gathers in pools until it sublimates. If I cannot turn back time, and I can only wipe these tears, then I don’t have to do it alone. I can, sure, but it works better for me when I mark it over time, with my wife and son, with friends over beers. Grief works because I cannot change what happened to our family. I can only go forward, toward the heavy.
Perhaps the biggest surprise has been how much karaoke I’ve done recently. It’s a sign that there’s nothing so soothing as falling down with your friends who are there to keep you young. I’m reminded of the song “We Are Young” Will used to sing by Fun. “If you feel like falling down, I’ll carry you home tonight.”
You have’t heard it until you’ve heard Will’s version. Anyway it’s a song about getting high, letting loose, and that friendship is needship and that’s not such a bad thing at all.
For a time after Will died I decided I wanted to be completely sober. I didn’t want to run away from my feelings by drowning my sorrows, as it were. I wanted to feel my feelings, knowing that they would guide me.
The drinking has resumed more more less back to what it was before. I’m a man who takes his beer seriously, over-indulging when absolutely necessary (which is to say, often) and which, this year, culminated in barbecue, karaoke and school fundraisers. The rest of the time, it’s easy to remember to take it easy. The highs aren’t as high as they used to be. Come to think of it, the highs were never that high anyway. I guess grief mutes the past, too.
Which leads me back to where I started. There is grief work in simply taking care of your body. This is not a thing I’ve done well this grief-year. While I may have earned the right to gain a few pounds, I would prefer it if I honored Will differently. Then again, if happiness comes in a pull pork sandwich, who am I to say no? Therein is the rub. While joy for living is something we have done well, honoring Will’s good heart isn’t yet my keystone habit (which, if you believe the self-help books, is the thing that makes all the unbearable must-do’s likely to-do’s). I have promised myself I’ll take up yoga and strengthen my core. I promised myself I’d eat better and be centered. I’ve accomplished humbleness and compassion and I can say that I’ve had moments of pure joy. I may have gained a few pounds, yes. But I’ll work on that. Until now I have led with my gut. I have trusted friends, old and new, to take care of me and my family. They haven’t let us fall. Nor will they.
Grief work is forgiveness. For myself and others. I will say that there have been many conversations where others have asked how angry I am. I have cause to be angry. But I also have cause to be compassionate. Nobody wanted this to happen, and even if they did, would anger solve a goddamn thing? To my knowledge it’s useful in rousing the energy to score one more goal, but anger fades quickly and damages more often than not. No, anger won’t do. It’s not the keystone Will would have me set.
Now, back to work.
On June 14th, 2015, William Oliver Abbott was given over to save 4 lives. His heart went to a 4-year-old girl. His liver went to a teenage girl. He gave one kidney to a young woman. He gave to other to a middle-age man. To his family he gave a love that will never cease.
