Bell Jars and Time Passages

 Humans have a need to mark time.  A need to commemorate events, the passage of time, milestones.   Like birthdays.  Birthdays are great.  We celebrate the person who was born, and the life we have with them.  It's a needed and usually positive ritual.

Tonight was the birthday celebration of one of my favorite family members.  Our small but mighty immediate family gathered in a special restaurant for a meal curated by our friend who is a wine and food coordinator, and it was fantastic.  But the longer I sat there, and watched interactions of my family -- and particularly, the two sets of father/sons, I became acutely and painfully aware of the absence of both my son and my husband.  

They have been gone for more than a decade.  And yet tonight the pain of missing them, and missing the relationship that they should now be having, was profound.  

How strange that a happy, positive, warm and upbeat family birthday dinner would suddenly turn dark, but so it did (but of course, only for me).

Tonight proved, again, that grief just sneaks up on you when you least expect it.  You can't guard against it.  I turned silent at the table but fortunately others were oblivious to my darkness and continued their conversations and laughs and celebration.    

Have you ever felt alone despite being surrounded by people, especially when they are people you know?  It is eerie.  Sylvia Plath described that feeling in her seminal work, "The Bell Jar."  It is as though the giant glass bell jar descends upon you, shutting you off from others.  They see you and you see them.  But you are not connected.  Not a part of what they are.

That was tonight.  And no one saw that the bell jar had come down upon me.  Because no one at that table could have had any clue of what it's like to observe the time passages in someone else's life and understand acutely that those time passages with people you love were snatched away from you.

I am not bitter or angry that others have been spared the grief I have endured, and that keeps kicking me down.  Each of us has been given our unique life paths.  Some paths are easy, some are not.  Mine happened to be not so easy.   

I've taken to pondering the question of why humans grieve, and why we do not "get over" the loss of someone we love.  As a former biology major I think, it must be due to genetics, or evolutionary preference, but in reality, nothing really accounts for it.  Only when one injects a spiritual component does a possible understanding happen.  Somewhere, in the mind, soul, cellular structure, or all of them, there is a sense that those who are gone still exist in some form and in some place.  We wish there was a way to have them with us in the only existence we know -- this one.  And knowing they are beyond us is the basis for grief.

We honor the passage of time by notches on the wall to show the growth of children;  marks on the calendar to show days passed and days to come; of holding celebrations honoring birthdays and anniversaries.  When we cannot make those marks or celebrate those times with those we love -- and know it will never happen again -- we cannot help but feel isolated, alone.  Even at a table filled with love and friendship and conviviality, the aloneness captures those of us who grieve.  The bell jar comes down again.

Copyright 2022

Memorial Day for Every Kind of War

 Memorial Day is an odd combination of memorial services for fallen soldier/military, and a day off to spend with family and friends.  It's a tough day for me, not because of any direct connection to a fallen soldier (although my children's grandfather is buried at Arlington, having been killed in action in Korea when their dad was an infant) but because of my hometown's Memorial Day celebration.

My son really wanted to be in the military.  Not only in honor of his grandfather, but in honor of his favorite aunt who proudly served in the Army.  He was never able to take the final step to enlisting as his illness always got in the way of judgment and opportunity.

We honor our service members here in town.  We celebrate their service and their sacrifice.  It's a community wide event.  My kids and I always participated in the local events.  And so of course on this day I can only think about my son in the high school marching band, marching in the parade, or riding his scooter to the park for the city-wide fireworks show, or watching the Jazz Band from the high school and telling me how he was aiming to play bass in the band.  Like the military, Jazz Band never happened due to his challenges.

Today, many years later, there is still a parade with the high school marching band, still a fireworks show where the kids show up with their friends and have a good time, still the Jazz Band playing to the crowds.  

As much as I enjoy the celebrations, it is hard to not be sad.  He was there.  Now he's not.  I am as alone and grieving for this loss as much as any parent whose child was lost in a battle far away from the hometown.

As I've written before, a Gold Star Mother (one who lost her child in war) is honored and revered.  But a mother who simply lost her child to another type of battle is ignored.  I am resigned to that, on every day except Memorial Day when I see his smile and golden hair either marching down the main street playing  the marching band version of the french horn, or riding his scooter around the park while the festivities are going on.  Today, on Memorial Day, I remember that I lost my son to a different kind of war -- a war of illness, of drugs, of evil nurses who prey upon the vulnerable.

His death as a result of a different war does not diminish my respect and honor for all the servicemembers who sacrificed.  Any loss of a child is the deepest kind of loss.  Whether by war, or gunfire, or evil nurses, or drugs, or stupid accident, it is the same outcome:  days and nights of mourning, mostly in silent in a world that would rather not remember the pain of losing a child.  

I'm grateful for Memorial Day, even with the pain, as it is a reason to publicly remember my son.  As the military heroes are remembered, so too are our children we have lost from other, more local wars.  Today, while at the park listening to the Jazz Band, I see him sitting beside me, sharing his aspirations, always wanting to move forward to new goals.  He lost his life in the battle of life.  Not while wearing a uniform, and so not put up on a memorial pedestal, but while trying to find his way despite so many obstacles.  Regardless, like the soldiers in battle somewhere far away, he was still my son, his battles cost him his life, but still his life mattered.  I will remember and honor that spark, that spirit, that joy that he brought to me and to so many others, for my entire life.

I close this post with his favorite parting phrase: Peace Out.