parent grief – Grief Warrior

Will the Circle Be Unbroken …

Remembering Mom at 70 Years Passed

June, 1936, on the steps of St. James Church, Elkins Park.

Even across the span of 70 years, I clearly remember this night, May 28, 1951, when Dad came home to tell us Mom had died. Mom, Molly, Margaret Mary Plunkett Herrmann was everybody’s sweetheart, none more than our Dad’s. They were married just short of 16 years on that night when Mom went to work at Standard Pressed Steel in Jenkintown and never returned home. She was 41.

The story, as I recall it being told to us, was that Mom felt sick at work and told one of her co-workers she had to take a break in the rest room. When she didn’t return, her co-worker went to look for her and found her there, apparently already gone of an undetected heart issue.

Mom left behind a grieving young husband, Al, who at age 40, never fully recovered from her loss; 5 kids: Al (15), Mary (13), Jack (11), Margie (8) and Patty (4); a father Pete; 3 siblings: Jack, Elizabeth and Ed; numerous nieces and nephews and friends. The entire small town of McKinley and the close-knit parish of St. James were both rocked by the loss of such a vivacious young woman, beloved by so many.

To Ron on Mother’s Day 2021

Dearest Ron

When you were a child, I would sometimes tell you that you were teaching me how to be a mom. Then, when you were about 10, you stopped me with this: “Wait a minute! Does that mean Joe gets a better Mom than me?” Your thinking was always a step ahead of mine.

Throughout life, you challenged me, laughed with me, forgave me, and told me what you needed. I did the same. When you were about 16 and our relationship was strained by your need for independence and my need for parental control, we each read and then discussed the book Parent Effectiveness Training based on the concept of mutual respect. It helped us understand what we were not getting right. That’s how much you cared. Even at 16, you were engaged enough to read that book so that we could negotiate strategies to benefit us both.

Gift from the Sanchez family, the work of Marisa and Brooke in January, 2016.

Sister Gertrude, Receiver of Grief

“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Such was the case in late 2016 when I was in the Medical Mission Sisters’ chapel. After the service, upon leaving the chapel, the tiniest little whiff of a nun, Sister Gertrude, was suddenly standing before me.

Stigmata

A grief poem for Lent

Grief creeps in

at first unnoticed,
unrelated to thought.

It descends slowly,
uninvited
sly and clammy
like fog.

Without warning, her eyelids
grow heavy and wet
a stinging sensation in her throat
shifts to her chest
belly heaving.
Legs immobilized, feet stick to the floor.
A face across the table saying what?

Then the memories
a smile, a laugh, that yearned-for familiar voice.
Their sorrow, her child’s and her own.

They say that to be a mother
is to have your heart walking around in someone else’s body.

What they say is true.

But wait!
When that someone else dies
what becomes of her heart that
was carried in that dear body? Turns out,
it was the most fragile of things.
Who knew it was made of spun glass so delicate that when it fell,
it shattered into exactly
Seventeen thousand
five hundred eight slivers.

No restoring that.

And so, she scooped them up and carries them around everywhere she goes. Every grieving mother has a stigmata
on the palms of her hands.

Everyone can see it.
They just need to look.

Marguerite Sexton 3.6.19

If healing comes, what will it be like?

In the days before Christmas, my sister, Patricia, who knows me inside and out, posted this for my benefit: “Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break and all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go, love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you. ” L.R. Knost

Marge on Rons bench from Julia_LI — *Ephemeral twilight moment captured at Ron’s bench, Lorimer Park by our granddaughter Julia.*

Our son, Ron, died on December 25, 2015, Christmas morning. Tuesday, December 26, 2017, was Day 1 of Year 3. That Christmas Eve and Christmas morning of 2015 run through my mind like an old newsreel. I am at once remembering everything I did, every conversation I had that Christmas Eve, while simultaneously imagining every step Ron was taking in planning to end his life. I contrast my Christmas Eve joy to his Christmas Eve sorrow, my Christmas morning happiness to his Christmas morning resignation of his fate and ultimately his death.

When your child dies, they take an almost unnatural place in the heart and the psyche of the parents. Perhaps the shock and pain of a sudden, tragic death exacerbates the intensity of the sorrow, which may seem to border on obsession at times. What is the way forward? Is true healing even possible? We love our other children and grandchildren very dearly. We love the place they hold in our lives. But the one whose death was so sudden and crushing has, at once, opened a hole in our hearts and our lives while, at the same time, taking up more spiritual, emotional and psychic space than the others. Continue reading “If healing comes, what will it be like?”

Watching for Signs

sign kep calm This is how long Ron has been gone: 1½ years, or 18 months, or 78 weeks or 548 days. In the early weeks after Ron died, people would occasionally ask if I could sense his presence with me. I would occasionally fudge my answer and say yes, mostly because people expected that I would and because others reported sensing messages from their loved ones who had passed. I was never actually sure of what the question meant and would answer in different ways according to different people or circumstances. But mostly it seemed true but not in the way people thought. Ron seemed to be with me because the separation was not real to me. The primal connection could not be abruptly severed. It was impossible to suddenly let him go. I have since learned that cells from the child remain inside the brain of the mother for always. Continue reading “Watching for Signs”

Trader Joe’s, Jamaican Beer and Resurrection

Very recently I was in Trader Joe’s, mindlessly wandering around there as I am wont to do. I was in the soft drink aisle with my right hand on a four-pack of Jamaican brewed ginger beer when a woman beside me softly said, “Does that taste good?” Continue reading “Trader Joe’s, Jamaican Beer and Resurrection”