Tag Archives for grief

Reaching Out — One to One


                                                Reaching Out — One to One

                                                            by Neal Lemery

                                    (published in the Tillamook County Pioneer, 1/8/2022

            I like the quiet of January.  All the holiday activity ends, the decorations are put away, and the social calendar slows to almost nothing.  There is clean, empty space, not only at home but in my life.  It is time to breathe.

            It is a time to be quiet, to connect with a friend, to have time for those serious and deep conversations that live deep in our hearts, to say what needs to be said and to put life in perspective.

            The last few weeks have been marked by those quiet, almost sacred moments with someone close, to give some thinking time to a recent experience, or just getting to know myself better.

            A friend who’d moved away a year ago unexpectedly showed up at a coffee shop where I catching up with another friend. He crashed my time with my other friend, yet he clearly needed to talk. Moving and retiring from a long, demanding career had been hard for him, giving him a much-needed space to rest and to find himself.  No longer identified by his job and his responsibilities, he was reconnecting with his wife and finding that he was enjoying life and putting together a new way of living.  He was discovering he liked himself, that he enjoyed his friends, and he had a new purpose.

            I listened, giving him space and time, being a friend. He needed to vent, to simply be heard. My time was a good present to offer him.

            A while ago, I picked up a young man getting out of prison.  He was making that life-changing drive from a prison cell to a half-way house.  Two years “inside” had nearly snuffed out his soul. It was a long drive through beautiful, wide-open country with no bars or walls. 

            We talked of many things, me trying to be quiet, to listen to someone who hadn’t had many people listen to him throughout his life. 

            We spotted a cormorant on a riverbank, drying its wings in the sunshine. He’d never seen a cormorant before and didn’t know about their lives. We talked about freedom then, the freedom to fly, to fish on the river.  Comfortable silences filled the rest of our trip, both of us finding our friendship quiet and easy. I thought of the healing power of solitude and nature, and the simple joy of sharing an experience with a friend.  

            I recently reconnected with a good friend, who reached out to me after one of her dear friends died by suicide. She had deep pain, and I was the ear she had sought. I listened; we cried. I gave the gift of listening, of not judging her friend, not advising her how to grieve, of not assuming or condemning. I held space for her, and acknowledged her pain.

            We reconnected after the funeral, she wanting to talk about death and life and the hereafter, the messy mystery of what she was feeling and not easily understanding. I gave her time and permission to feel.

            These quiet one on one conversations go both ways. Often, I need to be the talker and a friend be the listener. And, sometimes, it’s looking at the stars or the waves on the beach, or picking my guitar all by myself, but knowing I’m not really alone.

            I’m hoping I always have the time to reach out, or be the friend with the ready and willing ear and simply be there.

1/8/2022

To One Suddenly Departed


                                                

            I can take you for granted so easily. Often, you would be there in my life, a friend, one who listens, one who cares, full of life. Today, you are quickly gone, and we will talk and laugh together no more. I struggle to know what to do with all of this. Our lives together are gifts, more fragile than I want to see. 

And I grieve.

            You were steadfast, dependable, present for me and all the others in your life who have depended upon you to care, to comfort, to share with them the small moments in life. You were a bright light for so many.

            And I grieve.

            Such times together and such friendships seem ordinary, until they aren’t there anymore. Today, there is a void, an emptiness, a forever silence now that you are so quickly, so unexpectedly missing from us. Your dependability, your presence, your wisdom in my life has not been unnoticed, certainly not unappreciated, and now thoughts of you with us are painful, incomplete, confusing.

            And I grieve.

            Your laughter, your smile, your presence in our lives is now reduced to history, but has not gone unappreciated, nor unvalued. You are forever a part of me.

            And I grieve.

            I know now that you knew all that, and we were both brave enough to be honest with each other about friendship, how important that is, even when its value goes unspoken. Some truths do not need to be spoken to be recognized and honored, cherished.

            And I grieve.

            In this new emptiness, I hear only silence in the wind, and the echoes of all that I have cherished in our friendship.  In your absence, there are spaces in me that leave me less than whole. I remember you for all the good times. In that remembering, you live on in my grief.

Neal Lemery  6/3/2021

Being Mothered


                                    

                                                By Neal Lemery

            Mother’s Day is a tough holiday, a maudlin remembrance of Mom, who has passed on, but still figures in my life.  With any family relationship, it is a mixed bag, an often-confusing mix of emotions, feelings, and memories. Popular culture tells us to be adoring, grateful, and praising offspring, yet other thoughts and patterns of grief keep the emotions in what I often envision as being a whirlpool as I navigate through life. 

            This year, I’m feeling the need for nurturance.  Perhaps it is my long-term response to the pandemic, and the range of lockdowns, quarantines, and the emotional rollercoaster of coping with this contagion that seems to be a never-ending disruptor. I’m emotionally drained. I find myself seeking emotional sustenance, comfort, and the gratifying tenderness of a mother’s love.

            Ever since I’ve had a car, I’ve carried a blanket with me.  It goes back to when I was five, traveling with my mom and grandma through the mountains. We ran into a freak snowstorm, and almost slid off the road. Waiting for the snowplow, my elders made sure we were warm, underneath the ever-present blanket in my mom’s car, sipping hot tea from my grandmother’s trusty and well-worn thermos.  The disaster turned into an adventure, comforted by the blanket, hot tea and family stories I’d never heard before.

            A few years before my mom passed, she gave me a new car blanket. The hand-me-down old Pendleton blanket of my grandmother’s had finally succumbed to several generations of picnics, beach trips, and the occasional unexpected adventure. The new blanket stays behind the driver’s seat in my pickup, ready to wrap around me on a chilly evening, or become a picnic tablecloth or a dry seat on a log at the beach. When I pull it out, I am reminded of my mom, and her continual work to care for the family and keeping us safe and warm. Mom being Mom.

            This week, as Mother’s Day looms with all of its swirls of emotions and expectations, and no address for me to send Mom a card, or a phone number to call, I found myself wrapping the blanket around me, feeling its softness and its warmth. That sensual comfort chases away the emptiness, the grief that often haunts these holidays that are hyped as overly joyous events, the Hallmark moments that can easily drag me into a canyon of treacherous emotion. 

Feeling the fuzzy blanket around my shoulders is almost as good as a hug from Mom, and I can feel her presence in the room as I share a meal with family, and we tell stories of life’s adventures.  

I’m missing those times with her, sharing a pot of tea, telling stories, and planning a fun event with family.  Her blanket wrapped around me is a poor substitute for that, but I’m getting through this weekend with some much-needed sustenance and comfort, taking time for some self care and quality blanket time.   

5/8/2021

Grieving and Growing


 

 

By Neal Lemery

 

The weeks before spring, before the world comes fully awake from its winter slumber, and bursts forth with flowers and growth and new hope for a bright and joyous planet, is a time of contemplation for me. And now is a time for me to grieve, as lately I have lost some good friends.

 

Once again, the world is teaching me, and today’s lessons are about loss and leaving, about life and what we are here for. Like everything else in the School of Life, I don’t have much say in the curriculum or the class schedule. Yet, it is my job to show up and learn the lessons of the day.

 

My friends’ time has come and they have moved on, leaving this world.  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, but then, I never am. I can rage and scream and cry, but all that is not very productive.  I still feel empty inside, and not really sure I know how to honor their lives.  I look at how their lives have shaped my own, enriching me, and given me tools and ideas from which I can be a better person, and make a bigger difference in the world. There are always lessons to be learned, and ways for me to improve myself.

 

The spaces they filled in my life are empty, though I try to fill that up with something creative, something that will make a difference in this world, as if to make up for what they aren’t doing in the world anymore.  But, that’s a fool’s errand.  I can’t fill in the gaps that they have left in my life, and I can’t duplicate what they did, or would be doing now if they hadn’t died. Each of us is special, unique. I don’t think we are here to be clones of those who have moved on. Each of us has our own work to do here.

 

In my own life, though, I can better my own life, being more of a giver, a teacher, a creator, and a lover of the world.  That’s what my lately departed friends would want too, if they were sitting here having a cup of coffee with me.  They’d be pretty insistent with me, not being people who would cry in their beer, or host a pity party on their untimely and undesired demise.  They wouldn’t want me to be doing that either.

 

“Get on with life,” I can hear several of them say. “You’ve got more work to do. Now, get to it.”

 

Look at what you have taught, what you have created with your hands, and how much love you have spread. That’s the directive I’m getting from the Universe, as I wake to another day, and wonder, once again, what I am here for.

 

It’s not my time yet to go.  So I must go on.  I must spend less time thinking about those tears in my beer, and get out into the world, get a move on.  The departed ones are still with me, in many ways, and I still hear their voices, and their ideas and wisdom.  They were in my life for many reasons, and it is up to me to discover all that they have given me in our all too brief time together on this planet.

 

I have much to learn. The days are getting longer now, and the sunshine is warmer. Spring is coming, and life is renewing. It is time for me to grow, and to love more than I have ever thought possible.

Passing On


 

 

They say life’s a journey and time moves on

And lives end and and now you are gone.

When someone goes, it’s never on my schedule

And I can mourn, I can scream, and

I can cry.

But our lives move on, and my friend has passed.

 

They say your time had come, your work was done

You were letting go, and moving on.

You let me know in many ways that this was goodbye,

And that was fine, this was what would be—

And life goes on, so the well-wishers say.

 

I’m not done with you, I scream in my head

In the darkest of my thoughts, not wanting to know

You are gone, that you have passed, before I was willing

To say good-bye.

 

You are right, I’ll hear you say,

Seeing a spark of light in the darkest of the night —-

The ache remains, the emptiness unrelieved,

Your absence is what I resent.

 

The path you made through life still guides my steps

Your smile, now just a memory—

Your voice still whispers in my ear

When the path gets rough.

You letting me know it will work out,

That I’ll know the way, the path will clear,

You still by my side, you still lighting my way.

 

—Neal Lemery 1/9/2019

Unsaid


 

 

You would be one hundred tomorrow,

and I would have made you a cake—

your mom’s white spice cake with what we kids used to call

cement frosting – sugar boiled to death, and slathered on

like plaster, with an old kitchen knife of Grandma’s.

 

I’d make you hot Lipton tea, even though it will be a scorcher of a day–

you with your sweater on, and me breaking a sweat.

We’d talk and laugh, but when I would ask about you growing up,

and what it was like in your younger days, you’d get quiet, and

change the subject to how my garden was doing.

 

I still think about you living with your aunt that year,

while Grandma went to Fort Worth.

I figured it out that year your

cousin’s kids came to live with us for the summer,

you adding chairs and another leaf to the table—

no explanation given.

 

Years later, when I brought our foster son to meet you,

you’d baked a pie and made your favorite dish,

put out your great grandma’s English china bowl

and just smiled and gave him a hug.

 

You’ve been gone a long time now, but I still

grow your favorite rose

and think of you when I plant my peas, using Grandpa’s hoe,

and set the table when guests are coming,

using your silverware, and folding the napkins just like you.

 

I’ll even make some Lipton tea on a stormy day, and read a book—

remembering you doing that, while a roast cooked in the oven,

filling the house with love, you saying “Hi” when I got back from school.

 

A few years ago, something great happened and I picked up the phone—

halfway through the number, I realized you wouldn’t answer the call,

and laugh when I told you the news—

I miss that, sometimes more than I think I can stand.

 

The other day, I drove by Great Grandma’s house,

where you were “born and raised” and learned to ride your uncle’s horse,

the old and “new” barns gone now, the road to the cemetery just grass,

a hundred years changed most everything, I think,

Except what really mattered, what was too often left

Unsaid.

 

 

—Neal Lemery

September 2017

 

Grieving


 

 

 

They come into my life and then, too early, they are gone. And I mourn and grieve, cry and moan. I am angry at my loss, my pain, the void in my life as their sudden absence is a bleeding, infected wound that never quite seems to heal.

Grief dances its macabre and bittersweet retinue of every emotion, taking fiendish joy in ambushing me when I least expect it, when I am least able to cope with the pain.

Yet, deep down, I still carry their light and their love, and sense their their soul, still resounding with me, still an integral part of my life.

Why? What was so special about that person that I am so profoundly affected by their passing? What was it about them that reached me, touched my heart, and brought them so close to me, such an essential part of my life, my own story? What is the lesson to be learned?

I just read that plants emit light frequencies in a part of the light spectrum that is invisible to our eyes, yet photography is now able to record those images, those vibrations, and reveal another dimension of the profound beauty and intricacies of these living beings.

Is it that much of a stretch in thinking that people also emit vibrations and frequencies of light that is invisible to our eyes, yet sensed in a much deeper level by us, on a different, yet intuitive, level.

“You are special. You bring something into my life that is beautiful, meaningful for me.”

Attraction.

The law of attraction teaches us that we attract to ourselves the emotions, the feelings, the vibrations that we need. And when we open ourselves to those feelings, the presence of what we crave, then we become more complete, and more able to live the life that we deeply desire. We come closer to fulfilling our true purpose in this life.

And when a special person leaves us, there is a void, an emptiness, a loss. Yet there is also the knowing, deep down, of what they have brought to us in our all too brief time together. That memory serves us well, teaching us what we had needed and desired, to be a better, more complete person.

In that loss, that death, there are lessons to be learned, lessons on what we have needed and taken in, and grown from. When the class is over, only then do we fully appreciate the lessons learned, the experience gained, the real benefit of being present for the lesson, the experience.

At the end of a particular journey, the end of that special time when a special friend has come into my life and walked with me, only then do I first realize what I have experienced, what we had set out to learn, and how I needed to grow. I look back, and only then see from where I have come, how far I have traveled, and the name of the road I am on.

These dear ones who have passed on, the ones whose light I have needed along my own journey, have taught me great lessons, and deeply impacted my life. I find that when they are gone, only then do I start to fully realize the gifts they have given me, the lessons they have taught me, and the special places they have held in my life. Only then do I fully appreciate them, and find some sense of completeness and understanding of their presence in my life.

Somehow, their teaching to me is not complete until they are gone. Only then do I learn all the lessons they have been teaching me.

Only then is the full spectrum of the light they have shared revealed to me.

Only then can grief lead me to the understanding I have been led to eventually discover.

 

 

–Neal Lemery 6/16/2017

Taking Care


 

 

“Take care.” It’s a popular thing to say, as friends part, or end a phone call.

There’s a great need now to take care in our culture. I’m seeing a lot of pain, a lot of anxiety, a lot of doubt and uncertainty as to who we are as a nation and a culture. There’s a lot of doubt, of losing a sense of purpose.

When I watch the evening news, or peruse the headlines in the paper, I find myself emotionally wringing my hands, or throwing them up in anger. I’m close to my boiling point.

“What can I do about it?” I wonder. How can I take care?

Not much, I’ve concluded. But I can make a difference where I live.

I can take care in my community. And, it is something I can do, rather than sit on the couch, tap my foot, and bemoan to my wife about how things could be different. Talking back to the TV doesn’t seem to do anything.

A few weeks ago, a friend suddenly lost his son. It was a great tragedy, but what could I do? I still don’t know what I can do, but I did reach out to him. I went to his house and just sat with him, letting him talk, letting us sit there in silence. He was not alone, and I just listened. I went with him to the funeral home, and prayed with him, holding him as he cried.

At the funeral, I spoke the words he wanted said. I welcomed people, listened to them, and held them close. We cried and we grieved, and my friend was not alone.

A friend should not grieve alone, and there was a community of grief, holding my friend close. And, maybe that’s all that we can do, grieving together, taking care of each other, in that awful journey of grief and shock and bewilderment.

“I don’t know how to do this,” my friend said.

“None of us do,” I replied. “But we take care of ourselves and each other.”

“That’s all we can do.”

Another friend had a heart attack, and I sent my prayers, a few words of comfort, a message of “take care”. And, he is, and I am.

Another friend needed to talk, to get a worry off their chest, and let it out. So, I listened, and loved them, and listened some more. As we parted, we said those words, “take care”, and we will and we did.

I cared for a public space this morning, a small garden in a parking lot, often busy with people on a mission, with business to take care of, the never ending errands of life. I pruned, weeded, planted new plants, and added some fertilizer just before the next spring shower poured down. Most visitors won’t notice it, but some will. And, this summer, as the plants grow and bloom, and the empty spaces fill in, there will be some beauty to be enjoyed, a quiet respite on a busy day. That garden will “take care” of someone in need of that quiet moment.

What I did wasn’t much and it won’t make the evening news, but in other ways it was a lot. I made a small difference in one corner of the world.

I “took care” and, in this crazy world, that makes a difference.

 

–Neal Lemery

4/14/2017

 

 

Grieving and Anticipating


It’s the harshest kind of grief, hanging around, not ready to even barely get started. It hits me hard, even before I’m ready to stumble down that long road through the jungle that is grief.
Anticipatory grief, that’s what the psychologists call it. Grieving a loss before it actually occurs. But, I know it’s coming. So, I gird my loins, I steel myself for what is coming. I’ve been in this place before, and I’m old enough, lived enough life to know there’s a storm coming and I better get ready.
This grief doesn’t get to enjoy messing with all of me, not yet. There’s still hope. Hope that my friend will recover from cancer. Or that my relative who’s had several strokes and is severely depressed will turn the corner and be their old, dependable and personable self. Or, grieving some other change, some other loss in my life.
I can’t fully grieve, I can’t yet look ahead on this journey and start thinking those logical, sensible thoughts, that death is inevitable, that my loved one has passed away and that is simply reality.
No, that’s not reality. Not yet. There’s that hope poking around, reminding me that all is not lost, at least not yet. They could recover, they could rebound and this dark time will simply be remembered over coffee as a bad time, just one of those stumbling blocks on our walk through life.
This wound is open, infected. My magical thinking is that I can let this grief run its course, that I can gnash my teeth and scream at the wind in the middle of the storm. Eventually the dawn will come and I can see my way ahead, that life goes on, and I must take some steps in the right direction.
No, not yet. There’s that hope thing; there’s that uncertainty. So, I bargain and I rationalize and use all my grieving tools, looking for the easy way out.
“It’s not that bad,” I say to the mirror.
It is. The cancer and the stroke and the depression, or whatever disease my loved ones are battling are fierce and strong. And, let’s face it, fatal. It’s just a matter of time.
But. But, let me bargain. Let me cajole and do my best imitation of a cheerful Pollyanna.
That’s part of the grief process, the potholed journey I’m embarking on. My rational mind knows that. Yet, grief isn’t rational, isn’t a nice progressive process with a bright light shining a mile down the road.

Grief is chaos, bewilderment, a wringing of the hands, storming through my life, often blindsiding me, getting knocked off the rails.
This anticipation, it is still grief, and I don’t know how to deal with it, or make much sense out of it. I’ll just be grieving, with all of my righteous anger and rage, depression, frustration, self pity and glimmers of rational thoughts full of hope and a renewed healthy perspective of what life is all about.
Grieving is messy work, and like everyone else I know, it is work that I want to avoid. When I can’t avoid it, I’ll bargain and argue and ignore it and play all the mind games with the Fates that I’ve come to be pretty experienced with. Grief and I are wary rivals, wrestling as we do to see how I can move through these rough patches in my life.
Anticipatory grief? Heck, no. I’m right in the middle of it all. I call it out as grief, in all its forms and all of its moods. And, some day, I’ll emerge on the other side of the wormhole, a little worse for the wear, maybe. Yet, stronger for the journey.

—Neal Lemery. 9/6/2016