Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

grief

Time Wants to Show You a Different Country

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I walked with my oldest son Noah on the prairie Sunday night as emerald dragonflies swooped over a landscape abloom in a riot of wildflowers. The air sung, a symphony of trilling insects and rasping cottonwood leaves, a bobwhite’s questioning call, a goldfinch’s exuberant twitter. All around us the hills shimmered with sunlit bluestem.

It was astonishingly beautiful. And yet, I was gripped with sorrow.

My mind was on the young man who had taken his life the day before. A boy Noah had grown up with through elementary and middle school. A boy with a mom and a dad, with siblings and grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends. A boy with a whole life yet unlived. A boy.

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Last week I sat on my back patio and watched, rapt, as a large wasp with iridescent midnight blue wings straddled a dead cricket on the cement near my feet. The wasp hitched the insect to the underside of its abdomen and then scooted with its cargo toward the dirt under the barberry shrub, where it backed down into a hole, dragging the cricket behind it.

I was curious – curious enough to Google “black wasp and cricket” to see if I could find more about this puzzling behavior. From my research I learned that the cricket wasn’t actually dead; it was paralyzed. Turns out, after mating, the female black wasp doesn’t scavenge for a dead insect but instead immobilizes one that’s still alive – typically a grasshopper, cricket or katydid, a bug with substance. After dragging her paralyzed prey into the hole she’d dug earlier, the wasp lays a single egg onto the insect. She then goes back out to capture two additional insects to add to her lair, ensuring the nest is well-provisioned. Upon hatching, the larvae, safely cocooned in the host, have plenty of food to sustain them until they mature and are ready to emerge from the burrow.

As strange and perhaps macabre as it might sound, I admit, as a mother I can relate. Like the female wasp, I, too, endeavor to do everything I can to protect my children – to cocoon them in safety, to provide for them, to ensure their health and well-being. I, too, would like nothing more than to keep my boys swaddled forever in the security of my home and my protection, as far as possible from the many threats and dangers this world presents.

And yet, I know that like the mother wasp, I, too, must release my children into the larger world and allow them to emerge into themselves.

The truth is, this scares me. I am afraid to let my children go. I am afraid of the many threats I know about and, even more, the many I can’t even begin to fathom. I am afraid of what I can’t control, afraid of the fact that as they venture farther and farther away from the nest, the less I am able to protect them, provide for them and help sustain them. I am afraid, too, that the more they begin to emerge as themselves, the less I might know them, the less I might understand them.

Sunday night I opened Facebook Messenger to send the young man’s mother a note of condolence. I typed in her name, still at a loss as to what I should or could say in the face of this inconceivable tragedy. There in the chat box, unexpectedly, was the thread of our last online conversation. It was from August 2010, a note confirming plans for Noah’s ninth birthday party – pizza at Old Chicago and a movie, Despicable Me. It was a quick exchange, noting the time for drop-off at the restaurant, the time for pick-up after the movie – mundane, ordinary. My heart broke over what we couldn’t have foreseen then. My heart broke over everything that was still possible nine years ago.

“Time wants to show you a different country,” wrote the poet William Stafford. Sunday evening I walked with my eighteen-year-old son on an astonishingly beautiful evening on the prairie. Side by side we bent low in the grass to peer at an elegant orb weaver, remembering the spider we once nicknamed Clem after we discovered it nestled in the clematis vine in our garden. Side by side we snapped photographs of sunflowers, purple thistle, feathery bluestem. Side by side we walked the grass path to the top of the hill, where we leaned against the weathered fence and waited for the setting sun to paint the clouds before it slipped below the horizon.

I think nine years ago I naïvely hoped I might be able to keep my children safe forever. I think I pretended that we could stay cocooned. As each year passes I understand more deeply, more painfully, how impossible this is. Each year I also see and understand a little more about the country time is revealing to me, a country that is both more beautiful and more heartbreaking than I ever could have imagined.

Why We Need to Feel Our Grief

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“You’re going to feel some pressure,” the doctor murmured as he inserted the needle into my elbow. Turns out “some pressure” was the euphemism of the century. What I actually felt during the five-minute platelet injection was teeth-gritting, fist-clenched agony.

By the time the short procedure was over, hot tears were slipping down the sides of my face, along my hairline, over the edge of my jaw and down my neck, where they dripped one at a time, slowly and steadily like fluid in an IV bag, onto the white sheet beneath me.

Much to my surprise, once the tears started, they didn’t stop. Neither the doctor nor the nurse knew quite what to make of my silent but persistent weeping. The nurse thrust a fist full of tissues into my hand. The doctor advised ice, two Extra Strength Tylenol and limited elbow movement. And then they both fled, the nurse urging “take your time,” before pulling the door closed with a quiet click behind her.

I cried as I retrieved my purse from the hook and gingerly slipped it over the shoulder of my good arm.

I cried as I hurried through the waiting room, chin tucked, hair shielding my streaming eyes so as not to scare the living daylights out of the patients awaiting their own appointments.

I cried as I drove home, wrangling the steering wheel with one hand.

I was still crying as I tucked myself into the corner of the sofa, cradling my throbbing elbow with a cupped palm.

It was only then that it occurred to me that I might be crying over something other than my elbow.

Earlier that morning I had published the blog post I had written about my decision to quit book writing. As I’d sat in the orthopedist’s waiting room, I’d pulled the post up on my phone to read some of the comments that had begun to accumulate.

I didn’t expect any “big feelings.” Though I’d published the post about my decision that morning, I’d made the actual decision weeks before. Choosing to leave traditional book-writing and publishing was a decision that, after careful discernment, I believed in my heart was right and good. I acknowledged there was sadness – I even named it grief in the post – but mostly what I felt in the aftermath of the decision, and as I wrote the blog post about it, was relief, an unburdening.

Until, that is, the orthopedist’s needle pricked something else far beneath flesh, bone and tendon.

What began as a tearful reaction to unexpected physical pain crossed an invisible threshold. My tears at the sudden, sharp stab of the needle deep in the soft tissue of my elbow opened a portal of sorts into which I tumbled headlong, like a time-space traveler hurtling into an unfamiliar dimension.

The tears prompted by the unexpected jolt of searing pain opened the way to the sorrow and loss I had acknowledged in words but hadn’t actually allowed myself to feel.

Experts say that we Enneagram Type 3s are the least aware of and in touch with our feelings. Until recently I would have told you that I was a person who was very in touch with her feelings, thank you very much. But I am beginning to see this might not be entirely true. I am beginning to realize that just because you say you feel something and even name it publicly doesn’t mean you’ve taken the time and space to actually feel it – to wade into that sorrow and allow yourself to experience the confusing, uncomfortable, unkempt mess of it.

The truth is, it’s hard and deeply uncomfortable to feel, really feel, pain. No one actually wants to sit with and in pain. And yet, I believe the only path to true healing, growth and transformation is to do exactly that – to step into the pain, to stay in it and lean into it for as long as it takes. As so many wise people have said, the only way out of grief is through it.

After the emotional ungluing in the orthopedist’s office, I spent the rest of the week quietly and slowly reading through every beautiful, heartfelt, kind, loving, and encouraging email, blog post comment, Facebook message and tweet I received in the wake of my announcement about leaving traditional publishing. There were A LOT. (thank you!!!)

My inclination was to rush, to skim over these notes of kindness, empathy and compassion. I wanted to read through them fast, to get it over with in order to keep myself at arm’s length from whatever emotions might begin to rise to the surface.

But I didn’t do that. Instead, I read each message slowly and thoughtfully and responded personally to many of them. As I read and replied, I let myself receive and feel all the feelings – gratitude, love, joy, relief, regret, sorrow, fear, disappointment, grief. I stayed in the feelings, leaned into them – into their unruliness, into their stubborn refusal to be managed and contained.

It was uncomfortable and unfun to feel the real brunt of this loss. And yet, I believe it was an important and necessary step toward trusting in something that is, for right now, beyond what I can see.

When You’re Not Feeling Very Adventy

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I’ll be honest: I’m not feeling very Adventy this Advent.  I don’t have that sense of anticipation, the expectation that is often present in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I’m just…here. Slogging. Going through the motions. Checking chores off my list. I feel a heaviness inside, an unease I can’t quite put my finger on.

I find myself wishing it were Lent instead. Somehow these lackluster, angsty feelings seem more appropriate for those somber, mid-winter days.

Sixteen years ago on a sultry August day, during the early hours of labor with Noah, my first-born, I sat outside on the back patio, my hands resting on my big belly as it tightened and released, tightened and released. I called friends and chatted happily. Later I paced the backyard, deep-breathing as the cicadas sawed the thick humidity. I thought about my baby boy, my heart, head and gut a tangle of nervous, jangling joy.

Fourteen hours later I lay in a hospital bed in the dark. The nurse had piled three blankets on top of me. They were warm from the dryer, but still, I shook uncontrollably from somewhere deep in my core, like seismic waves rippling out from an epicenter. It wasn’t cold exactly, and I wasn’t in pain – the epidural had largely alleviated that — but something unfamiliar and frightening was happening to my body.

“You’re in transition,” the nurse told me, patting my shoulder as I gripped the sheets.

I was afraid. Around me the voices of encouragement receded. Everything grew hazy, the end point a dim prick of light. I lost focus. The goal seemed far away, unreachable. So fixed was I on the fear and the unfamiliar, I lost sight of everything else, including the baby boy I was about to birth into the world.

Transition…not the most appealing part of labor. Transition leaves you feeling shaky, out of control, lost and anxious. Transition dims your focus, blurs the way, has you gripping the bed sheets. Transition is when the hard, necessary work gets done, the work that will lead you out the other side again. But it’s not fun. It’s lonely and scary.

When You're Not Feeling Very Adventy

I feel like I am in some sort of transition right now, though I don’t know what I am transitioning out of and in to. It’s not as frightening as that first labor transition by any stretch, and yet, there is still a palpable sense of unease.

I recently read some verses in John that resonated with me. Something kept bringing me right back to the start of the paragraph to read and reread the same words again:

“Your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy, that a child is born into the world. So with you: now is your time of grief, but I will see you again, and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” (John 16:20-22)

Your time has come, says the Lord. Now is your time of grief.

Maybe you’re like me right now. Maybe you’re not feeling particularly Adventy this Advent. Maybe you’re feeling a little lost, a bit afraid, lonely, weary, shaky. Maybe you’re doing the hard work of transition. Maybe you’re not seeing Jesus very clearly right now when it seems like everyone else is.

It’s okay. Those words I read in John? Those words are from God, telling us that it’s okay.

Now is my time of grief. And the timing may be less than perfect, it being Advent and all, but now is the time nonetheless.

There’s hope. God still sees me, and I will see him again. And we will rejoice, Jesus assures me, for no one can take away our joy.

*This is actually an edited repost that was featured in the December issue of Gather magazine. When I re-read it this week, though, it resonated with me, because truth be told, I’m not feeling very Adventy this Advent. I hope, if you’re in a similar place, it will offer you a bit of solace. Peace, friends. 

 

Practicing the Ministry of Presence

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Hi friends – I’m still on a blogging break, but I wanted to share my monthly column I wrote for the Journal Star with you. Thanks for your patience and grace as I take a little breather from (most of) my writing.

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Three weeks ago, the 33-year-old son of one of my father’s closest friends drowned while swimming in a small Massachusetts lake. According to reports, he jumped from a boat into the water and never resurfaced.

My parents were sleeping when the phone rang. At that point the body had not yet been found and recovered from the lake. My father’s friend, Don, and his wife had learned their son was missing and presumed dead when a police officer had knocked on their door that night. My dad was one of the first people they called.

After he got off the phone, my father dressed quickly and drove the short distance to his friend’s house, where he spent some time with him and his wife. The next morning my dad was at the lake with Don and his wife when the divers resumed their search. He was there again the following morning when the divers finally recovered the body.

Later, in a phone conversation with my dad, I asked him what he had done during all the hours he had spent at the lake. “Nothing really,” he said. “I was just there.”

My dad said most of the time he had sat on a bench a little ways away from the beach where the search and recovery operation was centered. Don came and sat next to him from time to time. They would talk a little bit, and then Don would get up from the bench to be with his wife or another one of his family members.

“He said he wanted me there, so I was there,” my dad said.

Often our inclination is to run in the opposite direction in the face of another person’s suffering or grief. We tend to make excuses for ourselves — “She would rather be alone…The family needs privacy right now…There’s nothing I can really do to help…” – because we are uncomfortable and afraid. When we do summon the courage to show up, we often feel compelled to do something or say something we think, or at least hope, will be helpful.

This isn’t to say that making a meal or mowing the lawn or offering prayers and condolences aren’t valuable things to do when someone you know is suffering. They are. But sometimes, especially in the earliest stages when grief is still registering as shock, simply coming alongside someone who is suffering when everyone else is turning away can be a precious gift.

Baptist minister Reverend Jeffrey Brown calls this practice of showing up the “ministry of presence.” “I find that among the most effective ways to do ministry is to shut up and just be there,” Brown said.

My dad and Don have known each other for 46 years. They both worked as guidance counselors at the same small high school in Connecticut. They are close in the way men of their generation often are. They attend one another’s milestone events, like retirement parties and children’s weddings. They go out to dinner together with their wives, or visit over beers on the back deck. They don’t often talk a lot about personal stuff. Yet my dad was the one Don called when tragedy struck. And my dad showed up.

Sitting on a lakeside bench in the background hour after hour doesn’t sound like much of an offering in the face of unimaginable tragedy. But in his small, unobtrusive way, my dad practiced the ministry of presence. He was there for his friend, and his presence — simple, quiet, and unadorned — was a gift.

 

Be Gentle Always

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Be Kind

I stopped short in the driveway and stood staring. It all looked so normal, so everyday — the potted impatiens she’d planted in front of the garage, the Windexed windows, the kitchen light glowing inside. No one would have known what was going on behind that front door.  No one would have guessed from the outside that there was grieving and sickness, tears and joy mingled bittersweet.

I watched the grandkids play tag, climb the river birch tree. They yelled and laughed, falling in piles on the grass.

Later that same week I drove to church early on a Sunday morning. I stopped at red and then accelerated, and just at the last second I saw the car turn left in front of me. I slammed the brakes and glimpsed through the windshield a fist raised, mouths forming angry words, faces leaning forward, disgusted.

What I’d absent-mindedly taken for a stop sign was actually a red traffic light. I’d been distracted, thinking about labored breathing and cool extremities and the other signs of imminent death my husband had catalogued for me the night before on the telephone.  The couple in the oncoming car had turned on the green arrow; they’d had the right of way. The angry look on their faces accused, “Pay attention, stupid girl!”

I didn’t blame them for the angry words I couldn’t hear. Not really. I’ve done the same myself – muttered a searing response to the driver who cut sharply into my lane, the cashier who seemed grumpy and impolite.

I didn’t blame the couple in the car for their angry gestures because they simply didn’t know. They didn’t know that my driving error wasn’t intentional. They didn’t know that I was simply distracted by suffering and worry.

It would be easier if we all resembled Atlas, the weight of the world plainly strapped to our backs. It would be easier to be kind to others if we clearly saw what they were carrying – the grief, the sorrow, the lost job, the estranged spouse, the addicted child, the dying mother. But we don’t know, we can’t always see the pain and suffering. We can’t always see what the other person is carrying.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” No one knows for sure who said it first. Some say Plato. Some say Philo of Alexandria. But the point is a good one.

We must always aim to be gentle with one another. Kind. Tolerant. Forgiving. We must always try to give one another the benefit of the doubt. Because at one point or another, the person who carelessly cuts you off at the red light, who hands you your change with barely a nod, who snaps at work, who doesn’t wave back – that person is carrying the weight of the world, a weight you can’t see. And your gentleness may be the balm that calms and soothes, the bit of peace that person needs.

{This is a repost of a piece I wrote five years ago this month, when my mother-in-law Janice was dying. It was a tough time, but that time also helped me understand why it’s important to try to give others the benefit of the doubt, to offer them gentleness, even when their actions and behavior don’t seem to make sense. I had looked fine on the outside; no one would have known the grief I was carrying in my heart.}