The Art of Undoing

Ever wondered what grief looks like a decade later?

Do you wish you had a window into the future after a major loss?

Fourteen years since the worst day of my life.  Fourteen years since the fourteenth of October.  I’ve often had folks marvel at how I made it through.  How have you built the life you have now?  I can’t say I have that figured out (besides the grace of God), but I can share some principles:

My daughter, Christina was born with Cystic Fibrosis.  Under my careful adherence to medical protocol, she thrived.  She did everything any little girl could do – played soccer, danced ballet, jazz and modern, played with her friends, attended school (until we decided to homeschool) and participated in Girl Scouts.  Her illness was undetectable to outsiders and her lungs never declined.  Her only hospital visits were for sinus surgeries.  Then, she moved into her teens and my careful adherence was no longer possible.  I had to let her be her own person and she was a person uninterested in the multiple nebulizer treatments, chest physical therapy, and handful of enzyme capsules with every meal or snack.  The stress of a difficult marriage between her parents, and the reality of her health brought mood disorders and other mental health struggles throughout high school.  I could write a whole book on the challenge of parenting in those years.  In fact, that season inspired my dissertation research on the psychosocial needs of adolescents with Cystic Fibrosis.  That book sits in the Regent University library and on my shelf today…

Things were looking up as she vowed to turn over a new leaf with her entry to college.  I treasure so many amazing times with the woman she was becoming, despite the heartbreaking moments in between, but it all fell apart swiftly.  In the space of 10 days, at the age of 22, she departed and I was left stunned and devastated.

I always say that our culture has a terrible time with grief.  Most folks struggle to know what to say, how to support others and those who are grieving are made to feel that they need to be “over it” within 3-7 business days.  I haven’t seen much conversation on the long term journey of grief so I decided to share a bit of my story.  My hope is that it can light the way for others in their journey of grief.  

I remember leaving the hospital at 1am..without my daughter.  It was a small band of us who had been there for the multiple code blues and the final goodbye.  I remember sending a few texts.  We started driving home from Miami back to West Palm but realized about halfway that we needed to stop.  We found a motel by the highway and got a couple of rooms.  After a few hours of “rest”, I got up, posted the news on social media (which had been our prayer wall) and called our pastor’s wife.  She arranged for the care pastor to meet us so we drove straight from the motel to the church.  Arrangements were completed that day.  The funeral service took place four days later.  Five days after that, I returned to work.

It was all so surreal.  I don’t think we’re ever prepared for the day to day reality of loss.  All the little ways in which the missing presence is felt.  I remember when she was alive,  I was leaving work and knew I needed to stop at Wal Mart on my way home.  I was talking to her on the phone as I left my office, debating whether to come get her first and then go to the store, and I whined about how someday, she would be married and have her own life and I wouldn’t have her to go with me to Wal Mart any more.  There was this long silence….then she dryly said, “mom, I’m not even dating anyone”.  We laughed about that story so many times and the first time I had to go to Wal Mart after she died, I sobbed.  Who would have thought that simple errand would undo me?  She had also been my primary confidante for the abundant drama going on at work.  Crazy things had been happening.  She knew all the characters and all the details.  No one else needed no explanation.  Just two examples of the many ways her absence was felt.

Another aspect of grief that we don’t often discuss is the loss of identity.  I remember the laissez faire that developed in me after her death.  I had submitted the final draft of my dissertation mere weeks before she died.  My chair had sent her response during Christina’s time in the medical intensive care unit.  It remained unopened.  The bizarre dynamics at work that would have activated my response in the past – I could barely muster a care.  I realized after the fact that the boss I had at the time was so incredibly inept at dealing with my grief and the collective grief of my entire staff who had their own personal relationships with Christina.  I blamed it all on grief but I eventually realized that the career drive and success I had always attributed to ambition was actually rooted in my role as mother.  I was the primary breadwinner for most of the marriage to her dad and so the responsibility fell on my shoulders to ensure that we had access to good health insurance.  My blazing trail up the ladder at every organization I ever worked for was simply a part of my responsibility as mom.  Without that motivation, I couldn’t care less.  Who was I besides Christina’s mom? 

The pain of her loss was relentless and searing.  So many tears were shed in my car – a place we had spent much time together.  I battled the ‘shoulda/woulda/coulda’ game.  What if I had driven her to Miami myself instead of waiting for transport to be approved?  What if I had made different choices in her adolescence that would have prevented some of the damage she did to her body?  Recognizing that I was flirting with the idea that I had the God-level power of life and death in my hands, gave me a harsh reality check that (mostly) snapped me out of that cruel game.  I eventually imagined her stern little face chastising me: “mom, you better finish that degree you started…you didn’t come this far to let it all go!”  I opened the email.  I made the final changes.  I paid the book editor.  Before I knew it, I was applying for graduation and also applying for a job my friend encouraged me to pursue.  Driving home from my graduation in Virginia, I stopped in Orlando for the job interview.  Ten months after her death, I was moving three hours north to start a whole new chapter of switching from student development to teaching.  I think all of this offered things to focus on in the midst of the pain.  I wrote.  I cried.  I leaned on the friends who had walked the path with me.  I would not have made it without them!

As the first anniversary of her death approached, I had a jarring realization: I was surrounded by people (in my new city and job) who had never met Christina.  My students had no idea what significant date was appearing on my horizon.  It was so disorienting and I had a fresh wave of reckoning with the reality of her absence.  This is the thing about grief.  You think it’s done, that you’ve moved on but that’s not how it works.  I suppose you can choose to fill the space your loved one occupied with other things, places, and/or people.  I can’t say how effective that is.  I chose not to.  I left the hole there…empty and visible.  I talked about her all the time and it touched my heart so much when one of my new work colleagues shared how she felt like she had known her because of how I shared.

Slowly, I threw myself into my new role.  I tackled the very challenging dynamics in my new workplace resulting from a significant trauma they had all faced prior to my arrival.  Funny how I ended up in a group where we were all grieving and recovering from trauma.  It was a hot mess but we worked through it.  I drove regularly back to our home in Palm Beach County as my husband worked to renovate the place.  We got renters and he joined me in Orlando 16 months later.  Months before her death, Christina had confronted me about the marriage – challenging my presence in a situation she found unacceptable.  I wanted to model commitment, covenant and perseverance but sadly, I came to realize what I modeled for her was enabling and acceptance of toxicity.  It didn’t take long for those pending dynamics to resurface once we were living under the same roof again.  My body served me notice that it had ENOUGH, my health tanked and I restarted the therapy process I had promised Christina I would engage.  Months of therapy, prayer, fasting, surgery and self care later…I asked for a separation.  Two and a half years later, I finally filed for divorce.  Another loss.  Another wound.

Despite the pain and anxiety of those two and a half years, I had space to discover my true self and aspects of God that I had never engaged.  It was bittersweet to find that Christina was far more like me than I had realized.  It was just that life and its responsibilities had forced me to bury much of what she had been free to exude.   As I formed new relationships and pursued my faith in expanded ways, I built my identity from the ground up.  As new information surfaced from my biological family, I missed processing with her.  As the world took wild turns, I started to feel more and more gratitude that she wasn’t here to suffer through it.  I found myself honoring her memory by embracing and cultivating the characteristics she got from me that I had buried for so long – the creativity, the free spiritedness, the acceptance, the love.

While my life became an ode to the qualities we shared and, I continued to tell her stories freely, the passing years put more and more distance between me and her physical presence.  I can no longer conjure up the sound of her voice in my head.  I forget what it feels like to squeeze her tiny body in the bear hugs she would roll her eyes over.  A new type of grief emerges as I lose these tangible aspects of her.  My life is a 180 degree existence from where she left me.  Whether I want to accept it or not, letting go of my role as Christina’s mom allowed me to discover who Andrea was truly created to be.  Couldn’t that have happened without losing her?  That’s my beef with God and rest assured, we WILL discuss it when I get there.  That said, I trust His process and I cannot deny that she got a good deal.  She’s not missing much down here and I would never bring her back if I had the chance.  She no longer has to deal with the challenges of Cystic Fibrosis, nor the erosion of communal responsibility that she would have needed to survive here.  I love her too much to wish that on her, just so I could enjoy her presence.  And so…I’ve built a whole new life with its own joys and love.  The hole is still there but love has grown up around it.  There is a beautiful, flowering hedge that encircles it, to the point that I rarely see it anymore.  I know it’s there though and sometimes it either catches me by surprise or, I choose to sit with it.  That will never change and that’s OK.  I don’t have to abandon it in order to have the life God has blessed me to build.  Grief is a both/and – it honors who we loved AND exists alongside the new life we can have if we are willing to risk loving and trying again.