She rereads the article she clipped from the newspaper about another mother’s child who died tragically. Her eyes fill with tears as she puts pen to paper.
“I understand your grief because it happened to me,” she writes to these suffering parents whom she has never met. “Let others help you through your terrible nightmare,” she advises them. “You’ll get stronger with each passing year, but you’ll never, ever stop loving your child with all your heart.”
Linda’s love for her daughter was boundless. But she and Molly were also best friends. They went clothes shopping together and baked poppy-seed cakes and regularly waged battle on one of the local tennis courts. “You two are inseparable,” friends often commented, and Linda always smiled and thanked God for blessing her with such a lively and loving child.
“I’m the only one in the dorm who can’t wait for parents’ weekend,” Molly once told Linda on the phone from Arizona State University, where she was a freshman.
It was a few months later when Molly went on a spring-break train trip through Mexico with friends. There was a terrible accident. That Sunday afternoon Linda and Larry received the fateful phone call.
“Is it Molly?” Linda gasped when Larry’s face turned white as a sheet, and she nearly passed out when he nodded yes. “Is she dead?” she asked, but deep in her heart Linda could already sense the answer. In the blink of an eye her precious Molly was gone.
“I simply can’t bear this pain,” Linda sobbed as mourners gathered at the family’s Boulder, Colorado, home to offer their condolences and love. Dozens arrived from Molly’s college. Others traveled from as far away as Australia to express their grief and to attend the funeral that filled a twelve-hundred-seat church to overflowing.
Neighbors brought food to feed the scores of mourners who gathered each day to pay their respects. Others cleaned and shopped and chauffeured Linda and Larry wherever they needed to go. Neither was in any shape to drive.
Linda cried herself to sleep. “I’ll never see Molly graduate from college and begin a career,” she grieved. “I’ll never see her fall in love or start a family of her own.”
The pain was so unbearable that Linda became briefly suicidal. But her friend Kay took Linda in hand. “See those kids?” she said, pointing to Molly’s many friends who had gathered to share their tears and their memories. “If you take your own life, how many of them do you suppose might follow you? And what about Larry? He needs you just as much as you need him. The two of you must face this tragedy together.”
Linda tried, but for months she was unable to bear the sight of any of Molly’s favorite places: the local mall, the lake where the family used to go fishing, the tennis courts where Linda first taught her little girl how to swing a racket.
Once, when she felt strong enough to venture out to buy a friend a birthday card, Linda bolted from the shop in tears. “The racks were filled with Mother’s Day cards,” she wept that night in Larry’s arms.
The holidays were hardest of all. Molly’s birthday. Thanksgiving. Christmas.
It was the day after Christmas when Linda spotted a newspaper account of a young boy who had perished in a holiday skiing accident. Her heart went out to the child’s mom and dad, and soon Linda was pouring out her feelings in a letter. “If there’s anything we can do, please call,” she urged, and a few weeks later the boy’s parents came for a visit.
“How do you go on?” the newly bereaved mom asked Linda in a tear-choked voice.
Linda clasped Larry’s hand. “We help each other,” she explained. “It’s the only way.”
Linda’s words seemed to comfort the couple, and from that day forward whenever Molly’s mom heard of a child who had died she always took time to send the parents a heartfelt letter. The writing brought Linda solace, and many of those who received her notes called or wrote back to say how much her gentle words had helped them through their darkest hours.
One morning Linda awoke from hugging Molly in a dream with a single thought resounding in her head. “I’m going to write a book,” she decided. She borrowed a typewriter and began that very afternoon. She described the sudden triggers of grief and loss, and how she and Larry finally found the strength to start living again. “Helping others is what God means for me to do with my life,” Linda realized with sudden clarity.
Linda wrote not one book but two: I Don’t Know How to Help Them, for friends and family of bereaved parents, and Standing Beside You, which she wrote for grieving moms and dads. She self-published both books and included her home address so anyone who wanted could contact her.
Soon the letters began pouring in, and they haven’t stopped to this day. Linda answers each and every correspondence personally. She also attends book signings and organizes discussion groups afterward.
“When Molly died, I used to think that if she’d never lived, I wouldn’t have to go through all of this pain,” Linda shares with these groups. “But now I understand that I also would have missed out on the happiest, most fulfilling nineteen years of my life being Molly’s mom.”
These meetings always take their toll on Linda. Afterward, she lies awake for several nights, haunted by all the sad stories she’s heard, and because she knows that for many of the parents she met, the real pain is only beginning.
Linda spends several hours every day at her desk answering the dozens of letters she receives each week from bereaved parents, their friends and their families. “If I can help one person get through another twenty-four hours, I know that my Molly is proud of me,” she says. “She’s with me always. She’s standing right here beside me, and the memories don’t hurt anymore.”
Heather Black
Let the Body Grieve Itself
You don’t think you’ll live past it and you don’t really. The person you were is gone. But the half of you that’s still alive wakes up one day and takes over again.
Barbara Kingsolver
I woke up early on January 1, the first day of the new century, and crawled out of my cave (the name I have given to my bed). It had been an uneventful New Year’s Eve, in bed by 10 P.M., pillow over my ears to block out the sounds of centennial celebrations in my neighborhood.
I had spent the past several years at the bottom of pain after my twenty-one-year-old daughter, Jenna, was killed in a bus accident while studying abroad. Her death and that of three other students on the bus in India had made news all around the world. I was a heartsick father, convinced there was nothing further to celebrate, ever. I went through the motions of trying to put my world back together. I acted as if my life would one day have purpose and meaning again, but I lived in utter despair. My life, as I had known it, was over. There would be no “good times,” no celebrations, not without my daughter.
As I stepped over Rascal, the family dog, nestled in her spot bedside the bed, the phone rang. It was my friend Anne, in a panic and asking for my help. “Ken, I’m worried about Howard. He’s been depressed all week. Would you please call him, Ken? Today?”
And so it was that I called my buddy Howard, whose third-generation family business was losing millions of dollars and facing a hostile takeover. Howard was glad to hear from me. In response to my invitation to go to lunch, he said, “I am on my way to yoga. Why don’t you join me and then we can go for lunch?” Realizing I could help a friend in trouble and escape my own misery for a few hours, I agreed.
An hour later I was sitting lotus style next to Howard in a room full of bright-eyed yoga students. A surprising number of them were men my age who appeared to be in very good shape, and I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. I could not remember the last time I had stretched; I had been filling my emptiness with food since Jenna’s death and had gained twenty-five pounds. I also felt a little awkward sitting among a group of straight-backed, New Age types who obviously knew what they were doing. Then I gazed over at my friend, his face full of anguish, and he looked back at me, trying to smile. I was quickly reminded why I was there. I felt somehow closer
to him than ever before, like he was beginning to understand what it was like to have your heart ripped out. I felt somehow less alone.
As the class settled in, a beautiful, young, soft-spoken yoga teacher named Diane invited us to turn our attention inward. She asked us to “find a comfortable position, close your eyes. Take a deep breath in, and on the out breath, release any tension you might be holding.” Weaving a barefoot path through the mire of students, Diane then spoke the first of what would be many words I would never forget. “Let go! Trust. Let the body breathe itself.”
What? I thought.
My breathing had become shallow and controlled. My pain was often so big, I did not know whether I could make it to the next moment. I had been fighting just to survive. And yet, listening to Diane’s soft, reassuring voice, I was able to surrender a little bit at a time. Let the body breathe itself, I repeated over and over until I could feel myself soften and then let go. My body had been frozen by the trauma of my daughter’s death. Each cell had been turned inside out. In a way, I too had died, had ceased to breathe. But here I was sitting on a yoga mat, discovering new breath, new movement and new life.
Diane then led us into a yoga posture she called “the heart opener.”
Before I was able to fully grasp what my body was doing, I had let out a soft, harrowing sigh. Then I felt tears running down my cheek. In its wisdom, my body was allowing a small release. I had discovered a new cave, a safe, five-thousand-year-old refuge for my grief called “yoga.” In the next hour, Diane’s soothing voice led me on a gentle journey back into my body, my heart and my soul. The more she guided us, saying things like, “Let yourself in, gently, compassionately, without straining,” the more I realized how I had locked myself out. I had shut down my body and emotions. Without really being aware of it, I was dying. Perhaps like many parents who experience the unspeakable, unthinkable nightmare of losing a child, I had shut down as a means of coping with the seemingly unending pain. And I had given up.
Guided and encouraged by a wise and caring teacher, I took my first baby steps. I began to learn the practice of self-compassion. And I had discovered a path to begin healing my life. Yoga taught me to reopen my heart and still my mind. Diane’s invitations to “notice how your body is different each day” and “differentiate between tension and strength” taught me more about grief, healing and the rebirth of hope than any book I had read. I began to find nourishment in silence and felt somehow more connected with my daughter in those moments. At the end of that first class, as we sat silently, I spoke to Jenna, telling her that I loved her, that I was going to try to fight my way back into life and make her proud of me for not giving up. In the weeks and months to follow, I learned to calm the obsessive thinking that so often accompanies traumatic loss and to reactivate the “fight back” and “feel good” systems in my body. With coaching, I slowly learned that it was okay to allow grief to move through me. Let the body grieve itself, I began to tell myself.
It became a ritual for me to gently place my hand over my heart and cry softly for several moments during each class and to talk to Jenna during the closing meditations. I was clearing the way for a new life, one in which I could live with and through my loss. I would always grieve the death of my daughter. Now I could experience the joy and privilege of having had her in my life for twenty-one precious years. She would be in my heart forever. Since that day, I have attended yoga classes two or three times a week. I am gradually learning to live within my own skin again. I now accept that my grief is as choiceless as breathing. It cannot be forced or resisted, but it can be allowed. And I teach this to other parents each day through The Jenna Druck Foundation’s Families Helping Families Program. I keep myself in top shape through yoga, physically, mentally and spiritually, and honor my daughter by walking with bereaved parents, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends as they find their way through the darkness that is grief.
I thought I was saving a friend’s life by going to a New Year’s Day yoga class. It turns out, it’s my own life I saved.
Ken Druck
4
THOSE WE
WILL MISS
What we have once enjoyed, we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
Helen Keller
Father’s Day
Good morning! Good morning! The song from a Beatles album issued a wake-up call to the morning radio-show listeners. As the raucous noise of horns, crowing roosters, yowling cats and barking dogs slowly died away, John Hancock, the host of the talk show, announced with his usual up-tempo enthusiasm, “It is a good morning! It’s a Wednesday, and I don’t feel like talking about the news. Most of my regular listeners out there know there are other things on my mind these days besides health-care reform in Charlotte, crime legislation in Raleigh and serial killers all grouped in the same sentence. So today is Father’s Day—even though it’s only March. I’ll be back to explain.” The music of melodious guitars changed the mood as Dan Fogelberg’s song, “The Leader of the Band,” filled the airwaves. And listeners heard the emotional words of a mournful son who not only denied his love for his father, but made a poor attempt to imitate the man he admired most.
The music faded and Hancock came back saying, “Yeah, I know. It can’t be Father’s Day. But you know—it’s my show. Today, I want to pull your minds away from world dilemmas. Let’s talk about something we all have in common: fathers. Today, I promise I won’t be rude. I won’t be arrogant. That’s a switch, huh? I want you to call in and introduce us to your dad. Living, dead, good and bad. Tell us about that day with him at Shea Stadium, or remember back to the best conversation you ever had with him. I want to know what he taught you and why he’s special. Tell me about the dad who didn’t leave when things got tough. I don’t know how energetic you’re gonna get on this subject but I hope it works. I’d hate to have to play Montovani all day long. We’ll take a break—the lines are open. Back to you in two.”
In seconds, all lines were jammed. He was a morning talk-show host on the three-call-letter radio station in North Carolina. The association with his audience could best be described as a love/hate relationship. Most loved him for his persuasive personality and gregarious sense of humor and were tolerant of his attitude. But even those who adamantly disagreed with him on many subjects and disliked his arrogance couldn’t resist listening to him. This show would not be about complaints, whining or pettiness. The fifty thousand watts of air would be filled with real stories from the hearts of his audience as they called in testaments to their fathers.
The first caller said, “John, my father couldn’t read or write. He taught us ways to live that had nothing to do with the three Rs. Honesty, respect and character are his values. The whole family taught him to read when he was sixty. He’s a proud, yet humble guy who listens to you every day. He’s seriously ill now so before I miss the chance—I’d like to say on the air, ‘Dad, I love you,’” the voice cracked in emotion.
A fragile female voice said, “Hello, are you John Hancock?”
“I better be,” quipped John, “I’m wearin’ his underwear.”
“Well,” she continued, “I’m a great fan of yours. I listen every day. I know your dad’s been ill. Is he still with you?”
“Yes, ma’am, my father will always be with me.”
“Does he know how much you love him?”
“Well, I hope so,” John replied. “I wrote him a long emotional letter once, just to make sure he knew what he meant to me. I think I wrote it more for myself than I did for him.”
Further into the hour, the beat of Buddy Rich studded the air and John toasted, “This one’s for you, Dad. Some of my fondest memories with my dad were when he taught me how to be a drummer—like learning how to do a double paradiddle.”
A husky voice said, “Hey, Hancock, you’ve really opened a mind trap for me. I’m sitting here by the side of the road—blubbering and crying like a baby. I’ve never had much time for my dad. I put everything el
se first. I always meant to—but, well, you know. I just called him, telling him I’m pickin’ up a bottle of Scotch and comin’ over. He’s hearin’ your show today, too. I owe you one, buddy,” and the voice choked off.
Each caller shared their lives and their fathers with the listening fans. Comments so beautifully expressed that it seemed as though they were reading from a planned script. Details of a hundredth birthday party; loving praise to a stepfather; kids from a family of six whose dad had raised them after Mom abruptly died. Stories heavy with sacrifice and dedication. Most of the time John merely listened, joining in only occasionally.
It was the last ten minutes of the show, when this caller said, “Hancock, I never miss your show, but I was a little late tuning in today—missed the first part. I know your dad had a stroke. Did your father pass away last week?”
John hesitated a second then responded, “No—he didn’t.”
“Well, you always seem to come up with the unexpected. I hope you have some good news to tell us. My dad died years ago, but I see him every time I look in the mirror.”
Then John said, “The clock tells me it’s time to shut this show down but I need to share one more thing—about my dad. After midnight last night, my mom phoned with ‘the call you don’t ever want to get,’ telling me my dad had just died.”
All sound stopped on the station—dead air—an unpardonable sin in broadcasting. But in this case, excusable. It would later be reported that cars were spotted all over Charlotte, pulled to one side of the road—radio listeners sharing a few seconds of grief with John Hancock. He recovered his voice and struggled to continue. “After that call I found myself in a great state of denial. But my dad taught me to face up to things, to be a man’s man. I didn’t want to tell you ahead of time that he had died. It seemed only right for me to honor my father today by letting you pay tribute to yours. I’m one of the lucky ones. My grieving will be easier, I think, because my father and I found a sense of peace with each other that some people never find. After seven years on this air, my listeners have become like family. Family is what matters.”