I Was Transfixed by a Portrait I Found in Vietnam
It’s been hanging on my wall for thirty years, comforting me as I’ve grieved the loss of my son
I watch out the window of the plane as the first glimpses of Vietnam come into view, skyscrapers crowded along the snake-like Saigon River. Every Christmas my husband and I travel, nominally for his medical conferences, but in truth, it’s because I can’t tolerate staying home for the holiday. Four years earlier, my only child, Jason, died in a moped accident while on Christmas vacation in Mexico. He was just shy of his 21st birthday, just shy of becoming an adult, just shy of the rest of his life.
At an art gallery in Saigon a few days into our trip, a large painting at the far end of the showroom captures my attention: a portrait of an old woman on a black canvas. From under her checkered cap, a few wisps of grey hair spill over her face. Head bowed, she gazes at a small photograph in her hand.
Even from a distance, I’m transfixed. I move to where the portrait rests on an easel. The wrinkles in the woman’s leathered forehead are deep; she rests her chin on gnarled fingers. In her hand, she clutches a piece of faded cloth, the veins on the back of her hand a topographical map of a long life.
In her other hand, she holds a weathered photograph of a boy staring back at her, his uniform wrinkled and baggy. On his head, almost covering his eyes, is a battered army helmet. His expression is blank and haunting. He looks about twenty, the same age Jason was when he died. I decide the old woman must be the boy’s grandmother, mourning a grandson who died too young.
The gallery owner points at the image. “It looks like a painting, right?” She shows me a piece of fabric with an image of a flower. “Look closely.”
At first, I see nothing but stem and petals. Then she holds a magnifying glass in front of the flower. Careful, single stitches appear in the cloth.
“It’s embroidery, all done by hand. It takes years of training to perfect this ancient craft.”
Thirty years later, the framed portrait hangs on the wall above my computer in my home office, my sanctuary filled with meaningful items. Of special comfort are the pictures of Jason and some of his prized possessions, like his frayed corduroy beanbag frog.
When I feel the urge to visit Jason’s gravesite, I instead spend time in my office — the closest thing to a physical space that honors his memory. Without telling or including me, his father — my ex-husband — scattered Jason’s ashes in the Atlantic with his second family, leaving me nothing to remember him by other than pictures, mementos, and visits to the ocean.
The first thing I see when I walk into my office is the old woman. Though in truth we never met, she has become a good friend. When I sit at my computer, I know she’s there.
I thought I understood grief because of the grief counseling I had done in my career as a social worker, but after Jason’s death, I learned I didn’t understand anything about a mother grieving the death of her child.
In the months after I lost him — when I craved support the most — people drew back. I came to know this as the “pariah syndrome.” Conversations stopped when I entered a room. If people were talking about their children, there was an awkward change of subject. I needed to talk about my son, but I never initiated the conversation lest a listener back away.
I learned grief is personal; no one grieves exactly the same way. If someone asked my mother about Jason, her eyes would fill with tears, and she’d shake her head — a silent plea to change the subject. After Jason died, my mother never mentioned his name to me again. I know she cared deeply and worried about me, but the only evidence was a book she sent in the mail shortly after his death. There was no inscription.
The first flowers to arrive after Jason’s death were two dozen yellow roses with a card that read, “More than most, we understand. Love, Lois and Art.” Art Linkletter was a beloved radio comedian in the 1950s, and his wife was a dear friend and member of my charity’s board of directors. Two of their five children had died: their daughter leaping from a building while on LSD, their son in a car accident. For years at charity events, Lois and I sat next to each other. No words were spoken; none were needed.
Over time, I learned it was an exclusive club I’d been admitted to. No bylaws, no minutes, no meetings. The only way to become a member was for your child to die. Membership in the club meant any mother who had lost a child could call on you at any time. And you could call on other members. I’ve seldom used this privilege but knowing it’s there is an enormous comfort.
Swiss-American psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross established five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In my training, I relied on them when counseling people struggling with loss. It wasn’t until later I learned Kübler-Ross never studied grief following the totally different experience of sudden, unexpected death.
The most powerful stage for me was anger. The hardest part was that I had nowhere to direct it; I often raged at unpredictable targets. In the first year, it was at Jason through the daily letters I wrote to him. “How could you leave me?” and “How could you do this?” poured onto the pages.
After thirty years, the anger has mostly dissipated. I’m still angry the resort that loaned Jason the moped didn’t require a helmet, though I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have worn it. Irritation still sparks when someone says, “I know exactly how you feel,” because they don’t. I doubt I’ll ever get over the fury at my ex-husband for scattering Jason’s ashes without my knowledge or my permission.
In her memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion describes a grief-induced distortion of logic. I thought Jason visited me as a hawk that perched on a tree in our yard the day of his memorial service and regularly after. But we live at the beach, and there are no hawks.
Jason’s ashes were scattered in the Atlantic, yet in my mind, they made the trek to the Pacific where I live. I regularly walk the beach, putting my hand in the water and letting it air dry. The grains of sand that stuck to my skin all day made me feel connected to my son. I hated the moment I stepped into the shower.
For years, I conjured Jason sitting beside me. If side by side, we always touched at our elbows or knees. Even now, I will suddenly become aware that I’m not touching anyone.
Before Jason died, I saved things I was sure he’d want for himself and his children. Several years after Jason died it hit me: I have no one to whom I can give these treasures. No one wants these things that have sustained me. Someday I’ll have to throw them out, I think as I look around my office.
I recently ran across a box marked “Mementos’’ and sat down to sort through it. Jason’s high school graduation picture was on top. His mischievous blue eyes looked back at me, his grin stretching across his face. The yellowed tassel from his mortarboard lay draped across the picture.
I held the photograph in one hand and caressed the tassel in the other. I glanced at the old woman and the photo she held, then back down again. My hands were now gnarled, blue veins protruding from thin skin. My reflection on the glass of my computer showed wisps of grey hair. My wrinkles and blotches and sunken places were beginning to resemble hers.
I stared at the old woman’s face and, for the first time, knew the boy was not her grandson. It was her son. She, too, was the mother of a child who had died too young. The cloth she was holding must have been something of his that gave her comfort, just as the tassel gave me comfort.
We are fellow grievers. The wrenching emptiness lives on forever after the loss of a child, no matter who you are or where in the world you live or how long ago it happened. We are both alone with our pain because the rest of the world has moved on — as it should, as it must.
Over time, grief embroiders a complex pattern on the heart, subtle stitches only the griever can see. Knowing that another mother understands makes me feel a little less alone. We are members of the same club.
Judy Nelson is trained as a lawyer and has been a social worker, the CEO of a residential treatment center for abused children, and an executive coach. Her work has been published in Forbes.com, The Huffington Post, and Next Avenue. She lives with her husband, a retired physician, in Redondo Beach, California.
This essay is part of our Moms Don’t Have Time to Grieve column.
