Día de los Muertos

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In the US, we celebrate Halloween.  Everywhere I go this time of year, I'm likely to see suspended skeletons, undead clowns, rubber rats and snakes, zombie hands reaching out of cauldrons filled with candy, costumes in all their polyester glory, pumpkins carved in every conceivable shape, and all sorts of other tokens glorifying the threatening and chilling side of death and the human condition.  When I was a kid, I liked trick-or-treating and haunted houses, thinking nothing of it.  It was just a thing. 

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Then, I had my own kids.  Trick-or-treating was going out of vogue, but the kids loved parties and trunk-or-treating.  It was fun to see them dress in costume and enjoy the season.  We still do, to some extent.  But I stopped intentionally walking into Halloween stores the day I wandered into one and saw what looked like a plastic undead baby that had had an autopsy.  That's the day my real experience with death and the "fun" side of Halloween came crashing together.  And the fun side became a hollow shell that in no way captured one's real experience with death.  It became a mockery of my grief.  It was hard not to look at the plastic stitches on that plastic head and not think of other stitches on a very real head that had been alive such a short time before.  I can't walk into a Halloween store again because I don't want to revisit that experience. 

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When I went on a mission to serve the Spanish speaking people of California, I became familiar with a holiday I like so much better, the Día de los Muertos.  If you've seen Pixar's "Cocoa," you'll be somewhat familiar with it.  It's the celebration of the lives of loved ones now passed beyond the grave.  It doesn't treat death as an abstract concept for thrills and chills but views death as part of life and the dead not as faceless zombies but as real people who are no longer among the living.  That's the day I'd rather celebrate.  They use bright colors to show joy at the thinness of the veil between life and death on that night, to show joy in lives well lived.  Sure, I go through the motions of Halloween, for the sake of the kids.  But my heart is in the Día de los Muertos.  Give me that holiday any day over my own because, indeed, the dead are not just empty shells reanimated in horror stories but angels that will one day be resurrected to rejoin the living on a day to be celebrated.  I look forward to that day. 

Pleading for Peace

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I went to visit my nephew yesterday, the one who was emotionally destroyed by his mother's loss a few months ago.  You have to understand that this nephew tends to only believe what he sees.  He's never considered himself religious.  But the burden of his loss grew so heavy that he turned upward.  He plead for peace like his life depended on it.  In some ways, it does because he has been simply existing, an empty shell.  It has been months since he's actually lived his life.

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But then he plead for peace.  He sought hope, a sign, something that would help him move beyond the void of his existence.  And that night, his mother's voice came to him.  He heard her reassuring him, encouraging him, sharing the love he had craved as badly as a starving man craves food.  His late dog was there, sharing his love, supporting him.  His brother even felt the thump of the tail. As my nephew spoke of this experience, tears sprang to his eyes, and he did something that awed and inspired me: he bore testimony of God.  It was beautiful and intense.

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I am a religious person, but I haven't had this kind of experience.  I have read scriptures and prayed.   I have sought both joy and peace.  But I can't say that I've put this kind of passion and intensity into my prayers.  And it may be this is a gift God knows he needed but I do not.  Angels speak by the power of the Spirit.  And the words she spoke to her son sounded like her voice.  The Spirit was strong in the room when he shared his story.  I have no doubt this was his mother speaking to him because he needed it.  He needed her hope, her strength, her love.  In a way, I envy that experience.  I'd love to hear my angel's voice.  But I haven't sought that gift with my whole heart.  And I probably haven't needed it like he did.  God knows what we need.  And if we plead with Him, it may take a while or it may be fast, but He will answer.  Sometimes, that answer is no.  And sometimes, as it was for my nephew, that answer is yes.  And if, by some chance, we do have the sacred experience of such a gift, we get it for a reason.  Now, it's up to my nephew to embrace that gift, the gift of hope and the reminder of his mother's love, a love that can sustain and motivate him to live again.

Close Calls and Miracles

[My big boy preemie]

Do close calls haunt you as much as they do me, moments when you were either aware of how close you came to loss at the time or considered it later?  I've had close shaves in traffic that haunt me for quite a while after.  I should have lost my boy because of his fragile umbilical, which broke on its own when he was born a month early (early enough to be called a preemie but big enough that he didn't look it).  He could have died had he twisted the wrong way while in the womb.  Thoughts of this kind of close call haunt me. 

[My perfect (but shouldn't have been) second baby]

My girls were both miracle children as well.  My older girl should not have had a picture-perfect pregnancy and delivery due to the Kell antibody, a rare antibody that acts like RH- but with no possible treatment.  It treats the baby like a disease in the womb, one which needs to be attacked and killed.  Many babies have died of anemia or have had to be induced way early due to anemia.  My first daughter was in no way affected but should have been. When I was pregnant with my angel, we found out that we were 100% guaranteed to deal with Kell every pregnancy.  Yet it wasn't an issue with my first daughter.  Although we drove a 2 hour round trip every 1-2 weeks to the hospital to have my angel observed, she showed no signs of stress.  Both little girls were miracle babies because Kell didn't affect them, didn't seem to even touch them.  Meanwhile, I'd read a study of 6 women pregnant with Kell babies during the 80s.  All six babies died.  Mine were untouched. 

[My tiny angel who came and went]

Then, four months after birth, my second daughter, one of my miracle children, died in an accident, rolled into a pillow.  That was not a close call.  That was loss and pain that colored every other close call from before and after. Loss and pain that changed everything.

[Ambulance ride to remember.]

 
Now, I'm hypersensitive to close calls.  At the end of the summer season when my baby died, my older daughter collapsed in the beach with a grand mal seizure.  We were rushed an hour away to the closest hospital.  I knew I could have lost her there, but she was preserved.                                                                                                                                                                         

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Close calls haunt me elsewhere, too.  If I have that close-call in traffic, it bothers me.  When I tripped and fell on a sidewalk, and my head somehow skimmed past a bumper to land between bumper and ground, I knew I could have died.  I found out fairly recently a serial killer was working at the same school where I was working in college.  He was picking up and murdering women who roamed those streets mere blocks from my campus.  That feels like a close call to me.  Close calls are scarier than they ever were before because I understand mortality more than I ever did before.  I know I'm not in the "safe" land of it-couldn't-happen-to-me.  I understand bad things can happen to anybody at any time.  Close calls become scarier when you understand the angel if death is not far off for any of us at any time. 

[Helping hand]

Which is what makes our guardian angels all the more precious, what makes the protective hand of providence all the more prized.  When my daughter walked away after treatment for the febrile seizure with no permanent harm, I was reassured in a blessing that my children had a mission, that they would be preserved until that mission was fulfilled.  I know I have a mission, a purpose, here.  And I will be here and safe until that mission is fulfilled.  There is fear in focusing on close calls but comfort in focusing on faith.  At any one time, we can choose to embrace faith, to trust God and know He knows the grand plan.  He knows when it is our time to be preserved and when it is our time to be called home.  If I trust in Him, He will protect me until my mission is done.  It's easy to let fear creep into my mind, to remind me that close calls and loss are around every corner.  It's up to me where I allow my mind to dwell.  And my life is a lot happier when I trust in the hand of the Lord. 

Stories of Loss

[Covered wagon like those in which pioneers had to load everything they owned.]

Recently, my family went on a vacation to see pioneer sites.  People told stories of things pioneers lost like homes, children, fathers, mothers, freedom, and so much more.  Yet the people at the time viewed it all with such faith and peace.  How can one bury one's child along the prairie with no grave to visit, no flowers to leave, no child to hold, and only a memory to take with you?  I can't imagine it.  They lost everything they held dear and yet were able to continue to breathe.

[Joseph and Emma Smith's graves.]

I think over what people went through and wonder how they could find peace after what happened to them.  In Nauvoo, where we went, for instance, people like any one of us, living in a nice home with their family, were suddenly made to leave.  They got little to nothing from possible sale of their home.  Yet, when they left, they were not just peaceful but cheerful.  When they lost children, spouses, mothers, and fathers, they found a way to move on.  I think, or instance, of Emma Smith.  She endured home loss after home loss, child loss after child loss (burying five babies, six children in all), then the jailing and murder of her husband.  Yet she managed to move forward. 

[A typical Nauvoo home--they lived like the rest of us.]

These people were just normal people, living normal lives.  I've dealt with legal troubles.  It was nowhere near the scale that Emma did, with her husband being falsely accused and imprisoned repeatedly.  I've lost a baby, just one.  I never got cast out of my home.  I never had to bury my husband.  I have empathy for this woman, for these people because I've been through a fraction of what they endured. 

Yet they moved on.  They found joy again.  They found a way to heal, to move on.  And the source of that survival strategy, their healing, and that peace seems to be their faith in the Lord.  They trusted in the Lord and in the atonement.  They knew their families would be reunited again, that they would be together forever after all their pain was done.  I admire these people for their ability to go through what they went through with such peace and joy.  I know faith is the key to true healing.  Yet I'm still seeking that peace and joy.  Most of the time, I'm okay.  Most of the time, I feel the peace.  Yet full healing feels ever-elusive.  It still hurts.  I wonder if they felt the pain of all their loss.  I think so.  I look at a later picture of Emma's eyes and see an overwhelming sense of sadness, of pain, that isn't there in early photos. 

I know healing is possible.  I know those who have lost loved ones can find joy.  I know the Lord will heal us if we trust in him.  It's just not easy and not necessarily quick.  You, too, can find healing. 

Strategic Loss

I've been putting off giving away my dog for a year and a half, almost since we bought him.  I love this dog, and this dog loves me.  The problem is he viewed my husband as public enemy number one.   He was a rescue from a family who physically abused him.  The woman who rescued him actually broke a window to pull what she thought was a dead cat from a hot car but which turned out to be an overheated puppy, getting baked in the car. 

This vet tech, who rescued the puppy, carefully chose us from among several others (including one offering $1000, probably with the intent to turn him into a breeder) to be the family to take on this pomchi, Twixie.  I strove to live up to the responsibility.  Except Twixie associated my husband almost from the beginning with his previous owner, the abuser.  My husband simply picking him up turned the phrase "scared the crap out of him" into a literal reality.  Twixie would go nuts barking whenever my husband walked through the door, when Twixie expected my husband to walk through the door, or when my husband so much as twitched, changed positions, or stood up to walk around. 

                                                                 
And we truly tried everything to soften Twixie up.  My husband would give him lots of treats and love.  We tried pheromone emitters plugged into the wall, calming treats, and a tube of pheromones to be rubbed onto his nose.  We tried a Thunder shirt, a vest that is supposed to make a dog feel more relaxed.  We fixed him, thereby devaluing him with the hopes he could stay forever.  None of it changed his violent reaction in the slightest.  I seriously have sunk a small fortune into that little boy, hoping to smooth things over.  No dice.

 

I loved my little Twixie with his big, beautiful smile, his faithful way of following me everywhere, and his glorious, flowing pom tail and rear fur.  But he had started to exhibit behaviors that showed stress, Chihuahua impishness, and feeling overcrowded.  He knew the rules but sneaked away to steal flavors from the litter box, scattered garbage everywhere, pottied in every corner after sitting around outside, doing nothing, and just generally made himself difficult.  All of this was something we could work with.  But what it came down to was my depressive husband couldn't take getting told he wasn't welcome in his own home.  He bore with it for a year and a half and totally left it up to me.  But I finally decided it was time. 

I just hate loss.  I hate having to say goodbye or, worse, not getting to say goodbye because of all I've been through with child loss.  This was one of my furbabies.  And every loss hammers on that tender part of my heart that still aches with separation.  It's not that giving away a dog is comparable to child loss but that every loss compounds the one that came before and brings many of the same emotions to the surface.  We actually prayed about rehoming my little Twixie.  Both my husband and I felt good about the family we found, a waitress with little money who had had lost her Pomeranian babies stolen a couple of years before.  She paid us about the same for him as we had paid for him in the first place, about enough for gas.  At first, Twixie found the separation hard, but the next day, we heard back that he'd taken both the waitress and the uncle she lived with into his heart.  He was doing very well and was not barking at anyone.  He was happy. 

And, meanwhile, we rescued a little girl pom from a backyard breeder.  The little whitish creamish thing smelled of urine and clearly has lived in a cage much of her life.  She doesn't know how to dog.  But she loves everyone and has latched right onto me.  I still sometimes miss my Twixie, but I love my little Snow and know this change was for the best, that we were guided.  Everyone is happier now, including Twixie.  No, it's not loss like child loss, like I said, but it is hard to make a change like this.  I am thankful I did for all of our sakes. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Express Your Grief

[self-expression: Source]

Once upon a time, long before I had a real reason, I took a class on trauma writing.  In that class, I learned about the importance of finding a way to express your grief.   When I had just lost my brother then (a month later), my baby, I found bottled up emotions were bound to explode at the worst possible times.  Some people turn to unhealthy forms of self-medication and sometimes even self-destruct if they don't have some way to express their pain.  Some people do both self-expression and unhealthy self-medication.  If self-medication feels like a valid option, it's time to turn outward to a professional for help.  However, if you feel like you can do okay working with your pain, I recommend finding some form of self-expression as a means to processing grief. 

[Writing=love Source]

This could take the form of writing  as with poetry, memoir, blog, journal, letters to the loved one, true experience encoded in fiction, or any other written form. When I lost Alli, I frequently wrote poetry whenever my emotions spiked for whatever reason.  It gave me a place to process what I was feeling inside.  Most of those poems will (thankfully) never be read by anyone else.  But they were there for me when I needed them.  I wrote out the worst of my pain in journals that only descendents may ever read (assuming they can make out my scrawl--there's a reason I type more than I write long hand.)  I would sometimes write letters to Alli or my brother, telling them how much I miss them.  I have at least one novel waiting to be edited that features a mother losing her baby, which is my encoded experience.  Obviously, I also blog.  I highly recommend writing privately if you can't handle the idea of your words being read or publically if you think others can find help and hope with your words.   

For example, here is an unpolished poem I wrote the day after she died:

06-30-2010

Pain

Blinding, numbing

Burning like a volcano

And clouding out everything

From my vision.

Everything tastes like dirt.

I choke it down to fill the emptiness

But the real emptiness remains.

Everything I see, touch, think about

Links back to chubby toes,

Chunky little legs

Soft little cheeks,

Bright blue eyes

Staring at me from around the breast,

Peach fuzz across the soft head,

Round little bum

Aimed at me for a change

Preparatory to eating.

Where are you, my angel?

I long for you.

My every thought is for you,

Wondering how yesterday could have gone

If I’d have been just a little more careful

With your fragility.

My only comforts,

Your older brother and sister,

Your daddy

And above all knowing one day

You will fill my arms again. 

This poem heeds few poetic conventions, but it did capture my pain with imagery you can feel.  You don't have to be a great poet to write in ways that express your pain.  

[My baby, as an infant and as an angel]

Self-expression can take the form of any kind of art such as sculpture, painting, sketching, or anything else.  I had noticed while Alli was alive that she could have been a twin to my boy.  When I lost her, I first drew a picture of a baby picture I had of her.  I then took an older picture of my boy and turned that image into a girl.  That is how my baby probably looks as an angel.  I keep those pictures by my bed with the photos.  You really don't have to be a master artist to draw or paint or sculpt something that is a tribute to your loved one.

[Source]

You may also consider music and dance as forms of self-expression.  My nephews both write music to their beloved mother, about whom I blogged recently.  I have no talent for music, but if I did, I'd probably put some of my poetry to music.  You can find many dances on shows like "Dancing with the Stars" dedicated to lost loved ones.  You don't have to be a master dancer to dance out your loss and pain. 

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It's true that some people prefer to bottle emotions up inside or pretend it never happened.  But for many people, expressing their pain and working through their grief process and into healing is a helpful thing to do.  I recommend you find a way to express yourself if you haven't already.  If you'd like, you can share what you make here.  If you don't want to share, do it for you.  You'll feel better when you do. 

Dodging the Bus

(The Approaching Bus [source])

Alli's angelversary struck yesterday.  For all who know the pain of an anniversary of a loved one's death, you'll get the visual.  You see it coming, the pain it will create, but there's not much you can do about it, kind of like a speeding bus heading your way.  You can brace yourself, try to dodge it, sleep all day, or whatever, but it will still come. 

[Timpanogos--Escaping to the outdoors [Source])

Every year, we escape because the last place we want to be on the angelversary is home.  Three years ago, we stayed in a cabin.  Two years ago, we went to Craters of the Moon.  Last year, we went to a bed and breakfast then tried (unsuccessfully) to hike up to Timpanogos Cave.  That was depressing.  This year, we just made a day trip of it to Lava Hot Springs.  My girl spent the whole time wanting to go home, and we all were somewhat disappointed.  At least we weren't home. 

[The true face of the bus: this memory of a tiny coffin in a big hole.]

Of course, the emotions still caught up.  It's the bus principle.  One way or another, they always do.  Last night, I shared pictures of her short life and broke down.  My husband has had the depression bus strike today.  It always catches up.  But staying busy helped me survive the day, helped us both survive the day.  And we got to make memories with those who remain.  Should we just stay home and let the bus hit or keep up the day trips?  In the end, whether things work out or not, I think it's worth it.  These days create memories and bonding we wouldn't otherwise have.  And our angels can join us, too.  I highly recommend it if you can.  It won't stop the bus, but it may just add a sense (perhaps false, but a sense, nonetheless) that you can control your grief.  You may want to try it sometime.