Category Archives: Grieving Parents

Witnessing the Ninth

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I’ve been through eight death anniversaries since my daughter Randi’s suicide, so as I came upon the ninth, I should have known better. Somehow the date—October 6th, which I thought had been branded into my memory with a hot iron—escaped me. I made commitments on the 4th, 5th, and 6th itself. I freaked when I realized what I’d done. Would I be functional? Would I be aching to hole up at home like I had in some years? Would I burst into tears in my dream group? Which one of my erratic anniversary moods would rise up in my writing group?

BLOG 34 ALTAR

As always, I made a simple altar— the last of the flowers from the yard, a candle in a bowl of water so I could safely leave it lit overnight, two favorite photos. Angels, of course, because Randi had loved them so. The altar Randi’s grown daughter made in her home across the country was even more simple—just a purple orchid and a purple candle. 

When I arrived at my writing group, I surprised myself. Instead of stoically clutching my heavy burden alone, I announced it was the anniversary. I didn’t ask for anything and little was said, yet the support was palpable as we worked. I repeated this at each subsequent event. Each time I was witnessed, my mood stayed even, and I functioned well. Speaking on the phone with a friend who was going through something tough, I brought up the anniversary, finding it wasn’t necessary to ignore my needs in order to honor hers.

October 6thwas a warm and sunny Sunday. My husband and I and my older daughter opted for brunch al fresco. I thought about setting a place for Randi, but decided food was not the point. Instead I covered one side of the table and one chair with sprays of purple Russian sage. After we ate, we brought out the altar candle and a photo album and shared Randi stories.

BLOG 34 SAGE

To the Hindus, the number nine is the sacred number of completion, like the months of a pregnancy. On this anniversary I have given birth to a new stage of my relationship to my daughter’s death. Instead of wrapping myself in my pain like protective armor I invited heart connection. Those three days were not without sharp shots of sadness, but it turns out the weight of grief is lightened by simply being witnessed. 

You’re invited to the following New Mexico events as part of the Third AnnualBefore I Die New Mexico Festival:www.BeforeIDieNM.com

The Benefits of Writing Letters to the Dead, Monday, November 4, 3:45-4:45 pm 
A hands-on workshop to explore one way to make connection with and honor our deceased beloveds. DeVargas Funeral Home, 1520 Paseo del Pueblo Sur, TaosA hands-on workshop to explore one way to make connection with and honor our deceased beloveds. 

Is There Life After Death?Wednesday, November 6, 2:30-4:00 pm
Panel discussion with Judith Fein, Bethany Paix, and Andrea Campbell
Berardinelli McGee Life Event Center, 1399 Luisa St., Santa Fe

Video Podcast Interviews: Here are two more with Margaret Manning of (www.lifeafterdeath.com. Click on them to learn more about the wonders that can happen when we hear from our deceased beloveds.

“3 Powerful Lessons I Learned from My Daughter After Her Death (#1 Changed My Life Forever).” (14 minutes)

“7 Magical Stories of Ordinary People’s Extraordinary Connections with Loved Ones in the Afterlife.” (17 minutes)

You may buy The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veilin bookstores, throughwww.AnnieMattingley.comand through the following sites:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2zSaTLB
Barnes & Noble: http://bit.ly/2ljjV0I
Indie Bound: http://bit.ly/2gEcr3f
Hampton Roads/Red Wheel/Weiser: http://bit.ly/2gM255a

Nothing, No One, Is Ever Totally Lost

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Fall is in the air, in the way the mornings smell and feel, in the crackling cry of the Clark’s nutcrackers. These noisy birds are annoyed if I come too close and interrupt their pinon harvesting. It’s too early for them, isn’t it? I’m not ready for fall yet. Does this all portend an early frost? Will the flowers be felled before what I perceive to be their time?

My drying peppermint. Note the afternoon rain on the window.

I harvested the peppermint this morning and hung it in the sunporch to dry. This is a late summer task, not a fall one, but still that word “harvest” bothers me.

What I’m really not wanting is what follows fall—winter, snow, ice, cold. Yet these cycles teach me about how nothing ever stays the same. The grape hyacinth and crocus are the first to bloom in spring and the first to fade. All through spring and summer beauty shines, then disappears—lilacs, daylilies, the tall yellow yarrow I love so. Our irises are still impacted by last year’s army of voles who also killed most of the rhubarb. We have not yet finished clearing away the branches that were broken off by our heavy, late spring, snow.

Hail clattered everywhere last Sunday. I held my breath, remembering the baseball-sized hail that crashed through roofs and totaled cars in Colorado Springs last August. Sunday’s hail passed through without doing more than knocking off a few flower buds and petals.

Miscarriage, birth, life, death, illness, injury—they are all reflected in nature. If I can’t be present with change, I will suffer constantly. My garden and yard, the seasons, the moods of the sky and the mountains remind me of this at every turn. I don’t mourn the sun when it sets each night. I did not mourn it when it eclipsed on my birthday either. Why? Because I know the light always returns.

Last week I noticed a new volunteer hollyhock, not two feet tall, blooming a brilliant red. Another gift to be grateful for until the frost takes it away.

I look back at a journal entry about the despair I felt six years ago as I approached the first anniversary of my daughter Randi’s death—before her time. There have been so many steps and stages since then. Tears still arise unexpectedly as though from a bottomless well, yet even then I feel astonishingly blessed by life, and amazed and pleased that I can feel so blessed despite her death. I still often and regularly sense her presence to remind me that nothing, no one, is ever totally lost, totally gone.

This October 6th, the seventh anniversary, will include a new quality, since that’s when Hampton Roads is publishing my book. I think of this as bringing light to the darkness of that hellish day. Interviewing for and writing this book supported me through the winter of my grief and into its spring. I composted my sorrow and used it to nourish and feed my project. Now it is about to come into full bloom.

My prayer is that The After Death Chronicles will nourish all who read it, just as so much and so many have nourished me and it. Isn’t it ironic that I shrink away from fall for fear of the winter that will follow, when fall is my favorite season?

If you have after-death communication stories, I invite you to share them with me at http://www.AnnieMattingley.com. Just click “Share A Story” in the menu and follow the instructions. If you’d prefer to tell me your story verbally, let me know and we can arrange for that.

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released by Hampton Roads on October 6, 2017. Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound. Find out more on my Book Page.

 

Grief Poem #5

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(inspired by Canto de Obsidiana by Gerardo Suter, MACO exhibit, 2013)

Obsidian Shard

In the length of a phone call
it entered my flesh
pierced my chest through and through
my world torn off its axis
skin, muscle, ventricle, auricle, tissue, vein
penetrated by needle-thin volcanic glass.
I do not make peace with it.
I do not accept it.
There is no resolution, no closure.
I allow. No thing more.
By now its presence is not felt
until the sound of violin, tenor, or harp
splinters its strange reality
and fills me with old shadows.

Afterward, as if melted by memory’s furnace
it re-forms into the most slender of slivers.
In the night, I caress it for comfort.
Like a genie in a bottle
rubbed the right way
it brings the precious history
restores the unbroken umbilical cord.

I begin and begin again
and in her ending my beginning
grows fiercely forward
like the saguaro grows taller, stronger from lack.
I shed my black mourning, receive the sun. 

© creativecommonsstockphotos / Dreamstime Stock Photos

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released October 6, 2017. Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Indiebound. Find out more on my Book page at www.anniemattingley.com/books

Can We Say the Right Thing?

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Someone has died. Perhaps the hardest words to get right are the ones that must be said or written to their beloveds. In fact, we can never get these words right, because they won’t make the pain go away.

After my daughter’s death, going to the grocery store was no easier than standing naked on a pedestal on the plaza would have been. The eyes of strangers drew blood. I was hyper-aware of everyone and it seemed that most everyone—if they already knew—was hyper-aware of me. Mothers, especially, zipped around corners out of sight too often to be coincidental, as if my daughter’s death were contagious.

© creativecommonsstockphotos / Dreamstime Stock Photos

No one knew what to say, least of all me. The first few times I was asked, “Annie, how are you?” and blurted out that my daughter had taken her own life, it was as if I had punched the person in the belly. I learned to soften my words—“She was depressed. She became suicidal.” I watched people guess what I was about to say and prepare themselves.

I felt like a pariah when someone said absolutely nothing when told or, literally, backed away. If someone responded with a flat, “Sorry for your loss,” I felt closed out.

Yet when a woman I knew slightly leaned back against a shelf with a sense that she had all afternoon to listen and asked me, “How are you doing?” I closed her out with a curt, “Pretty well, thanks, and you?” I was impossible to please in those early months, because the wound always remained.

One day I ran into the friend of a friend. We small-talked until that challenging moment when she asked what was happening in my life. I told her gradually. Her eyes widened and welled. Looking shocked, she whispered, “I don’t know what to say.” And—this was key—she did not look away. She was so authentic my heart sprang open. I watched her processing before she continued. Her words, “I am so sorry. How are you doing with it?” were not special, but they were embedded with a level of presence that bathed me like warm oil. We spoke for a long time. I neither pretended to be all right nor broke down.

Our words can be simple if we allow them to arise without censorship. This woman was not afraid to express her natural response or to give herself time to deal with her own emotions. Because she was present with herself, she could be present with me and we could connect. Of course, there was timing too; I was in the right place to be authentic with her.

The timing of nearly all deaths disturbs, with the young, even more so. But our current cultural practices teach us that death is the enemy. We struggle to extend life at nearly any cost. We whisk bodies away to funeral homes as if they were too ugly to look upon until coiffed and made up. We are tongue-tied in the presence of grief and the bereaved. I respect words beyond measure, but I understand their limitations.

Perhaps the most significant action in the face of a person in grief is to feel our own pain and fears and to let this shine through our eyes and to allow our words to be the feeble and limited expressions they are. It is our body language, the looks on our faces and in our eyes that matter.

Saying the wrong thing may be less important than trying too hard to say the right thing.

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released October 6, 2017. Watch for pre-ordering in July.
www.anniemattingley.com

Grief Poem #1, 2011

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13 Moons, Since

Somehow I have managed
to weave her a nest
from bits of bone
my fallen hair
her ash, the shredded pages
of her old IRS forms.
I’ve knit these together
on the beams of the 13 moons,
since.

I can—most of the time—
keep her tucked in this corner of my heart
where the spirits care for her.
I don’t trip over the anguish
nearly so often now,
now mostly only when I choose.
Mostly.

I can’t recall the last time
I broke down after dialing
yet one more 800 number
to have her name removed
from yet one more mailing list.
We’ll need her signature,
one hapless call-center guy replied.
That will be difficult
I re-explained
since she is dead.
Oh, he said.
I’ll take care of it, he said.
Would that you could, I thought.
I open her mail: “Order now,
we’ll give you free shipping for life.”
And, after her mail is forwarded to my house,
“Welcome to the neighborhood.”

I am forced to say she is dead
over and over again
to write deceased across forms
to declare myself
the personal representative
of her Estate, to ask
do you need the Letters Testamentary?
a Death Certificate?
will a photocopy do?
Each action, each word spoken
another letting of blood.

Yet without these burdens
I might have wandered
the labyrinthine hallways
of disbelief for an eternity.
Only as her mail shrank
my official duties withered
could I begin to glean
that what remains of my daughter
is this one bittersweet bundle
nestled here within me.

© creativecommonsstockphotos / Dreamstime Stock Photo

The After Death Chronicles: True Stories of Comfort, Guidance, and Wisdom from Beyond the Veil. To be released October 6, 2017. Watch for pre-ordering in July.
www.anniemattingley.com