Weaving grief and love

The hardest steps I ever took were on a hot Thursday afternoon in early September as I walked away from my son's grave for the first time. The cemetery smelled of juniper and baked dirt and the heat rose up from our ankles, as Jason and I stood arm-in-arm, readying ourselves to go. I remember how my body slowly lurched forward as we steered each other towards the car while the hot sun filled the high desert cemetery with light. The wind, an almost constant presence out there, as familiar as birds who occupy the ancient trees, was still as I made my way along, feet dodging big clumps of cheatgrass along the way.

Just two days earlier we’d sat huddled together at the mortuary, “making arrangements” as they called it, which really meant having to tell someone else about how our lives seemingly and without warning, came to a halt as Dylan’s heart stopped beating in utero, a week past his due date. He was stillborn. And how we’d walked out of the hospital carrying a small purple memory box rather than our ten pound son.

All around me were reminders of how the forces of nature could alter everything; Newberry Volcano lies 20 miles south of Bend and is directly responsible for the creation of Pilot Butte, a constant presence in my life back then, one that I sometimes imagined looked like the backside of a sleepy brontosaurus. Closer to the cemetery, the elevated peaks of Three Sisters weren’t the gentle fairy tale their name suggested, but came about when plates shifted deep in the earth. One plate shifted under another and this process called subduction led to the formation of this trio. This is where the plates, layers of crust, crashed into each other in a fiery show, perhaps tens of thousands of years ago. It’s also the point where the fault lines in the earth are the longest and widest. Subduction zones are places where great trauma lies.

And here I was, all these years later, in the shadows of these mountains in the middle of my own destruction. Enveloped in grief. Loss everywhere.

Dylan’s in every step I take. He’s all I can think about as I recall the sound that came out of me when I held him for the first time, “Oh!” His still warm body is wrapped in a white cotton blanket and he is wearing a little white onesie with colorful baby-sized hand prints across it. At first glance his face looks reddish and I can see that it’s turning blue, but I am not seeing what he is right now. My eyes are soaking up what he should have been. I can see the slight curve of his nose and the shock of dark hair on his head. His eyes are closed, but I know the sky blue they would otherwise be. He feels light in my arms as I am holding him close against my own skin and as I study him, I am quiet for a while. He’s brand new and so familiar at the same time.

Perhaps there are still other people in the room, or maybe not. Everything and everyone else recedes and all I see is the top of his head and all I hear are words that come pouring out of some deep recess. “I love you so very much,” I tell him softly. “All the way to the moon and back and around the world three hundred and sixty seven times,” I add.

Some words I say out loud and some words I say with my heart. I know that he hears them. It is an ancient wisdom. I tell him about his family and about his sister. I tell him about his room and our cats. I tell him that we all love him. All this time I am holding my son for the only time we will get together on this big blue planet and maybe there are other people in the room, but not for us. For these moments it is just he and I and I am aware that this is a holy time. I know that this is something I will never get back. I know I have to remember this fiercely. It will all be over way too soon.

This whole day has been surreal. Later when I can reflect on it, I will remember how our family and friends dropped what they were doing and stood with us. I will remember our daughter sitting on the ground with friends, three little heads bowed together while they played with dolls during the funeral, and how as I watch them, I visually gather some of their innocence and it’s the closest thing I have that resembles hope. It’s one small, good thing.

As we drive along the dirt road that leads out of the cemetery, I slump down in the seat. By the time we reach the fence, as it will happen every single time, perhaps for the rest of my life, my tears water the desert air. Even as the miles pass and we make our way back to Bend, towards our families and the small gathering at his grandparents house, inside my head, I stay in Tumalo, my heart turned inside out.

Later that day, we walked back in our apartment and into a life that the three of us didn’t fit into anymore. For more than a year we did our best to go through the motions-- we worked, we took short family vacations over to the coast and to southern Oregon and we tried to dodge the grief that followed us. Then one day our four year old daughter started a conversation that shook me. “Mom, we used to be so happy, huh?” I nodded. “And then Dylan died and now we’re all so sad.” Six words leapt at me. “When will we be happy again?”

Up until her brother’s death, our lives had been full of quiet walks down a gravel filled road on the outskirts of Sunriver, where we scouted ospreys, baby hawks and porcupines. “Look,” I’d say while pointing out some amazing new discovery as we wandered the edge of the Deschutes River. We lived in a sweet log cabin, Jason’s Aunt Jennifer built with her own hands. At night there was a gathering of stars above us as the clearest moon lit up the sky. It was by all accounts an idyllic life and for her, a gentle childhood surrounded by a forest of towering but friendly ponderosas and jack pines. Now I felt like we’d all been catapulted headfirst into the kind of neighborhood you didn’t want to be in after dark. We’d never been here before, didn’t know where we were going and from what I could see there weren’t any road maps. Clearly we’d lost our bearings. How could we go from such a well crafted “before” to such an unimaginable “after”?

That fall she could have entered pre-school, but the thought of sending her away, even just for a few hours was inconceivable to me. She was my reason for getting up and facing each day. When I wanted to hole up and stay home, she would cajole me to take her to the park so she could swing higher and higher. She pointed to birds and flowers around our neighborhood and made me see beauty again. "Look at that!," she would say. And on the days when I could barely drag myself out of bed in the morning, she would be there. "I love you.," she would remind me. All those lessons I had poured into her, came right back to me when I needed them most.

And those six words pulled me along, inspiring me to keep trying to find something that resembled happiness in this new form. We moved back to southern Oregon and eventually made our way back to Ashland where bright red flags lined Main Street and the lush foothills around us offered a sense of peace. I didn’t know it back then, but we were charting our own map, however imperfect. We threw ourselves into volunteer work, discovering in the process that fighting for the rights of low income people felt especially good as we continue to rally for better access to health care, economic justice and independent media that tells the stories behind the issues. We rooted ourselves in southern Oregon until it felt like home. Healing crept up on us, not all at once, but in tiny flashes of kindness. Two more daughters were born and grew.

Above us, the moon kept rising and lighting up the darkness. Seventeen years passed.

Here’s the thing that nobody else will tell you about grief. Sometimes, however uncomfortable it is, you just have to sit with sadness for awhile. Sorrow waxes and wanes. You can ground yourself in simple things while time drags along; I recommend the taste of a fresh, ripe peach, love notes penned to a small daughter, perhaps added into a brown paper lunch bag with a funny little drawing on one side or listening to the sounds that hummingbird's wings make when they visit the feeders. These tiny things will add up.

The sorrow that most of us want to flee will help spit-shine the lens so that you’ll see things more clearly and feel things more deeply. Perhaps, in it’s wake it will leave a baffling richness as the map leads you along.