Tag: grief

Experiencing a second wave of grief

February 5, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

They say grief comes in waves. I’ve heard that over and over. It’s one thing to understand something intellectually; experiencing the thing is something else completely.

Last week my grief dissipated faster than I anticipated or wanted. I felt beauty in the sadness, and wanted to hold onto that feeling of beauty. The sadness hit me hard last Tuesday; by Wednesday it had lost about half its resonance, and I appreciated the feeling of lightness and joy I felt in replacement as the week progressed, but longed for the sadness to return. 

I needn’t have worried. The sadness returned over the weekend, much to my surprise. Our minds think linearly; as the sadness dissipated, I assumed it was receding permanently…even as I listened to podcasts where people talked about sadness coming in waves. Despite my longing for the sadness last week, I resented its return. I resented the surprise. Of course, I cannot control the return of sadness any more than I could control its dissipation. I assume the goal is to learn how to surrender into the waves and let go of the resentment and resistance; let’s just say I’m not there yet. 

We watched The Lion King over the weekend, or at least part of it. The original came out when I was in high school, and immediately became one of my favorite movies. I listened to the soundtrack over and over and over again. In my youth, the story was about a boy whose destiny was frustrated by a bad guy, but who ultimately overcame his obstacles and ‘won’. Now I see a story about a boy who expected his life to play out in a certain way (“I Just Can’t Wait to be King”) before experiencing a traumatic event (the death of his father) and developing a coping strategy (running away from home and adopting a carefree lifestyle with friends) that served a valuable purpose at the time (it may well have kept him alive) before being pulled back to face and overcome his trauma and fulfill his destiny. That story resonates deeply with me now: though my destiny was never to be King, I do feel as if I am being pulled back onto ‘my path’, at times in spite of my resistance. 

As an aside: my adolescent interpretation of the meaning behind The Lion King is no more or less accurate than my middle-aged interpretation. Art (and scripture too, for that matter) not only mean different things to different people, they mean different things to the same person at different stages in life. Intriguingly, even the artist loses control of the meaning of his or her art the moment it gets released out into the world; once public, the art takes on as many meanings as there are encounters with the art. The lesson for you: you can only embrace the resonance you feel, and learn what the resonance wants to reveal; but understand that others will find different learnings in their own resonance. Hold onto your meaning and learning, but allow others the grace to learn and discover what is meant for them.

Chaos theory is a scientific concept originally exposed to me by the book Jurassic Park a couple years before The Lion King. One idea that stuck with me was nonlinear dynamics: sometimes alluded to by shorthand as the Butterfly Effect, nonlinear dynamics posit that in certain complex systems, tiny changes in inputs yield vastly different outcomes. When modeling weather patterns, for example, scientists observed that tiny variations in wind materially impacts weather patterns surprisingly quickly. The wind could change as little as the displacement caused by a butterfly flapping its wings and still yield measurable results mere weeks later (thus the name The Butterly Effect). 

What I only recently learned is that chaos theory also posits that the range of possible outcomes, though large and nonlinear, tend to double back on themselves in something of a figure-8 pattern, with the 8 represented in large bands created by the range of potential outcomes. Somehow this concept helps me reconcile the age-old Christian struggle between the ideas of free will and predestination. We Americans are well versed in free will, the idea that individuals are empowered to make choices and forge their own path. Some Christians believe in predestination, the idea that an all-powerful and all-knowing God must have already determined everything, including the ‘choices’ we as individuals will make. My personal sense is that we individuals are empowered with free choice, and that our choices will set us on different possible paths, but that those paths circle around central themes that serve as apparent gravitational forces in our lives. Expressed artistically, there were many paths for Simba’s life to take, but they all centered around the gravitational pull toward his becoming king.  Expressed spiritually, I think this is why Buddhists (and to a lesser extent Christians) focus on surrender, correctly recognizing that our suffering comes from struggle, and our apparent insistence in resisting the path laid out for us. Surrender into our path does not in fact mean giving up our free will. Indeed, following our path is neither easy nor comfortable. I’m beginning to think of surrender like agreeing to play a video game we design for ourselves: the game is optimized for the maximum difficulty and struggle we can handle, while ensuring we have all the tools available for us to succeed (even if that means dropping the tools into the game just in time for us to utilize). 

Later in the weekend, and again last night, we listened to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”, a gloriously sad song originally released a couple years before Jurassic Park, but re-recorded last year by Luke Combs. Chapman and Combs performed the song as a duet at the Grammy’s on Sunday night, which brought the song back into my awareness. Some of the haunting sadness in Chapman’s voice is now replaced with hints of joy and cheerfulness, the observation of which brought me some gratitude. 

In my youth, “Fast Car” was a song about the exhilaration of youth and escape. Listening now, I notice for the first time that the song is also about the cycles of trauma, and how as adults we relive the trauma’s of our youth unless and until we really heal. Thus, the gravitational forces of ‘destiny’ apparently expressed in chaos theory revealed themselves again through art. 

We listened to the song together last night. I wept. Everett in particular found this curious, intimating he hadn’t seen me cry before (or had observed it rarely, I forget the exact framing). Leland corrected Everett: Leland is old enough to remember seeing Dad cry. I was surprised by Everett’s surprise; I feel as if I cry in front of you both regularly. Indeed in my mental model I cry all the time; perhaps I judge myself against the generations of men who came before me, who rarely if ever expressed emotion through tears. Alas, I am different; I weep somewhat regularly. Until this recent wave of grief the most reliable way for me to experience uncontrollable weeping was to watch movie scenes where dads are separated from their children (especially their sons). The idea of losing the two of you is more than I can bear. Perhaps we haven’t watched such a movie recently enough for Everett to be old enough to remember seeing his dad cry. 

Interestingly, neither of you seemed particularly bothered by my uncontrolled crying. You were curious, but not resistant. You didn’t judge, you didn’t criticize, you didn’t try to distract me, even with comfort. You just let me cry. You asked why, but you didn’t resist. Everett in particular I thought might try to distract or comfort me: you often dislike when others feel negative emotions. I wonder if my own lack of resistance, coupled with your mom’s openness, enabled you to allow space for me to cry. Whatever the reason, I’m oddly grateful we all shared that experience together. I’m glad you got to see me cry, and know that I don’t mind crying. On some level or some day I hope you can appreciate processing sadness was important to me at this stage in my journey. If you remember watching the song together with your dad and can tie that experience to these stories, so much the better. 

And why was I crying? I still can’t articulate it exactly. The overarching story, I think, is still me learning to surrender, and letting go of my illusion of control over my path. Somehow, though the effort to control my path yielded mostly pain and frustration, I feel an odd sadness of letting that story go. I have an odd attachment, even to the pain and frustration. I still hold some fear that I won’t have the strength or courage to walk in my path, and plenty of sadness around letting go of my cherished false idols. I think that’s enough for today, but we’ll discuss more soon.

I love you,

Dad

All-day coaching experience

January 29, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

I spent Saturday with my life coach. You may vaguely recall that I missed your basketball games that day, leaving after breakfast and coming home for dinner. Today I just want to talk about what I experienced. 

In a prior letter, I mentioned joining a spiritual group. Since September, we’ve engaged in daily meditations and journaling. Each week our prayers (or meditations; I’m coming to think of those terms interchangeably) center around a theme, including select scriptures. In these exercises, we’ve spent the last couple weeks meditating while pondering Jesus’ baptism and the recruitment of his disciples. Both of these stories resonated with me. 

The baptism struck me for two reasons: first, even Jesus needed the support of John the Baptist in completing his transformation. John himself was taken aback, intimating Jesus should be the one baptizing John. But Jesus stood firm. Thus Jesus asked John’s support washing away the old to make space for what was born anew. I spent the last year in a metaphorical cave healing and transforming; now I sense I am being called out of the cave, born anew. 

The recruitment of the disciples struck me because the disciples left behind everything they knew: their homes, their lives, their livelihoods, and even their families. I felt particular resonance around the saying goodbye to families; fortunately I do not sense that I am literally leaving my family behind, but I did fear that I am saying goodbye to old aspects of myself to which others might have grown attached (more on this idea in a moment). 

Strangely, I scheduled the coaching session weeks ago, long before we pondered the baptism and recruiting of disciples. When I requested an all-day meeting with my coach I only sensed the need to meet, albeit for reasons I did not yet fully comprehend. So it came as some surprise when the purpose of the meeting later revealed itself: to ritualistically wash away the old in order to make space for the new, and to introduce my new self to my coach (as a bit of a first step toward introducing my new self into the world). 

Relatively early in the day my coach asked me to do something I instinctively didn’t want to do. I pushed back gently, she challenged me gently. I took a moment to scan myself for why I felt tension. Suddenly it occurred to me. I felt as if I were getting pulled in all directions at once. I laughed, I gazed in astonishment, and then I doubted myself…and then I cycled through those emotions (and probably a few others) a few more times. Finally, I looked at her and said, “Mom, I got this. Let me go”. I’m honestly not sure what those words meant. Was that really a message I feel called to deliver to my mom? Was I channeling my coach’s teenage son? Or was I just talking to some aspect of myself, some inner voice? I honestly don’t know, though I’m starting to suspect the latter (e.g. the inner voice). All I knew then: those words wanted to be expressed in that moment. I proceeded to say something along the lines of “I stand here in my fear of abandonment from my mom, and with my dad’s voice telling me that I don’t fit in this world, saying to you ‘here I am; this is me'”. I felt an immense relief, and still sense I did something fundamental in that moment. It felt like me standing for who I am, who I am meant to be, in a strangely fundamental way. Said differently, despite a lifetime of habits teaching me to take a certain path in that situation, I deliberately if awkwardly chose a different path; in the process I laid a groove that will make choosing the new path easier the next time, and progressively easier each time I take it from now on. Perhaps that moment was my version of ‘saying goodbye to parents in order to follow Jesus’ (although in my version it’s saying goodbye to the fears I hold related to my parents in order to walk in my path). 

[One quick callout: I hold no ill will toward my mom and dad, and truly believe I had one of the most privileged childhoods in the world. In a future letter I’ll talk more about how we can acknowledge and even embrace the trauma we learn from or associate with our parents without judging or blaming them. Indeed, taking ownership of our own emotional states helps us humanize and fully embrace and accept and love our parents.]

At some point my coach asked what I felt; “Sadness. I feel sad letting go of those aspects of myself that embedded themselves in my relationships, and that others have learned to hold onto as part of who I am.” My coach had me write down the aspects of myself of which I was ready to let go; I read them aloud and we burned them. She now encourages me to observe a grieving process. 

I’m now coming to realize what I think my coach already knew, but helpfully let me figure out for myself: it was never my loved ones preventing me from becoming who I am meant to become. It was always me. My story that *they* might be holding onto old aspects of me was ultimately a voice in my head afraid to let go. My friends and family love me, and will love a new and improved version of me. And while it’s at least possible that some will struggle to accept aspects of the new me, I understand that relationships naturally ebb and flow; people come in and out of our lives, walking in our paths when they are meant to intersect, but separating when our paths are meant to diverge. I can let go (and be sad about letting go) of the need to hold tight to my loved ones, particularly when done out of fear, but more generally whenever it no longer serves us to do so. 

Truly loving oneself and loving others are one and the same. When we really know ourselves, we know what we must do, and know that we do so both for ourselves and for others. The idea that we must balance between what we do for ourselves and for others might seem logical, but doesn’t align to how the cosmos ultimately function. The ritual of letting go of the old me has belatedly helped me understand that letting go of the old me wasn’t selfish, and doesn’t sacrifice old relationships; by healing me and being my true self I open my capacity to love others, and invite them into their own healing journey.

We went to a hiking trail with enormous trees; it was breathtakingly beautiful. I could feel nature pulling sadness out of me, creating space for healing. We came upon a huge tree that appeared freshly fallen; it had apparently blown over aided by wet ground, as it uprooted in the act of falling. Soon we came upon another fallen tree. Then another and another; some smaller, but several wider than I am tall. I was struck by the beauty of the death and destruction. First I noticed the grain of the wood bared on a cracked-open tree; the wood was beautiful, the type from which one might build furniture. On another tree I noticed knots deep at the base, near the roots; of these scars I thought, “how beautiful; it’s perfect”. Encountering a tree that had fallen some time ago, with holes, worms, and other critters growing in the rotting wood, I thought “how beautiful; it’s perfect”. 

I then realized how my programming teaches me to react differently. My programming tells me that death is bad, and should be avoided. My programming tells me to be sad when I see a fallen tree, and to fear the rot. In that moment I understood on a much more visceral level that while death is inevitable, the pain we experience primarily comes from our resistance. We fight so hard to avoid or prevent death that we inflict unimaginable pain on ourselves in the process of resistance. I thought back to my observations on the Civil War, and how we inflicted unthinkable pain on our country in our resistance toward the death of slavery. 

In that moment, not for the first time, I sensed that we live in an era of death and decay. On some level we can all feel the decay, the impending death. But our programming tells us to resist, and so we live in an era of overwhelm and an era where we manifest creatures like Donald Trump so that we might mask or otherwise avoid facing the fear and sadness that accompany death and decay. 

Back at her house, my coach asked me to trace the arc of my life, and highlight times when I experienced ‘flow’. What she observed harkened back to something I had shared earlier in the day: my gift appears to be sitting at the intersection of creation and destruction. We noticed that I am gifted at designing the space for others to create; I am also gifted at certain types of creation. I have lots of programming that tells me not to pursue life as a creative. Alas, I think any other path would be inauthentic. 

And so, I emerge from the cave, having completed the ritual of washing away (or in my case, burning away) the old, ready to slowly introduce the new me into the world. Ready to accept the possibility of a life expressed in creativity. Ready to live in healing, being the invitation extended toward others to heal themselves. Ready to sit at the intersection of creation and destruction, feeling the waves of emotions that stem from the cycles of death and rebirth. Ready to exist in a state of flow, allowing the universe to express through me. 

Over the past year I’ve become a healthier, more whole version of myself. And like I said before I burned the note: I’m ready to let go of all remaining resistance to being authentically me. 

I love you both,

Dad

P.S. This morning my coach sent me a podcast about grieving. I thought her encouragement for me to grieve was overblown, but decided to give the podcast a listen; I listen to podcasts at the gym anyway, so this was no major inconvenience. Hearing others tell stories of loss and sadness triggered me almost immediately. I walked around the gym with tears streaming endlessly down my face. After that podcast I listened to another and another, and spent the whole morning cycling through waves of tears and profound sadness. 

In today’s meditation just sat with a pain in my chest. I noticed how, despite the pain, I felt a profound sense of beauty. Part of me wanted to sustain and hold onto that feeling. My suspicion is that I don’t really want to hold onto that profound level of sadness so much as I want to retain the ability to access it when needed. 

I’ve mourned loss before; in past experiences I’ve associated visual images of the person, place, or thing I was mourning with the feeling of sadness. This was different: I felt the sadness, but didn’t have any clear sense of precisely what I was mourning. I assume I was grieving the parts of me I had ritualistically let go on Saturday…but I’m not sure. Maybe those associations will become more clear over time. Maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I don’t know. 

What I do know: turns out my coach was right, I did need to grieve. Alas.