Good Grief

If there has ever been a misnomer in the English language, this would be it. Good grief, indeed!  There is nothing good about it.  At all.  Last week was a big week for us.  We celebrated Anna's third birthday with a noticeably smaller family, and the next day, we hit the one-month mark since Madi left us.  I guess it's our new normal now... happy and sad entertwined together. 

Madi and Anna shortly after Anna's first birthday

People ask how I'm doing a lot.   I usually just shrug my shoulders because I'm not quite sure what to say.  How can I explain what this feels like without bursting into tears or throwing something?  :) I usually spend most of my days in anticipation of the blissful few seconds after waking when I haven't remembered yet what is going on and everything feels fuzzy and warm and right.  It's as close as I've been able to get to taking a break from the grief.  It doesn't last long, though.  As soon as I'm coherent, the reality comes rushing down like a sandbag falling backstage at the opening of the curtain.  She's gone.  And so is my baby Frederick.  And the future feels bleak and uncomfortable and impossibly hard.

This month since Madi's death feels simultaneously like four minutes and four years.  Planning the funeral and burial was emotionally taxing, but so many friends came to our aid to help take over details that the burden felt light.  They say if you are ever having a bad day, just go to a Mormon funeral and it will perk you up.:)  I felt like this about both services.  Focusing on how sadness will become happiness eventually is refreshing and renewing, even if it's still... well, sad.  Services in Utah brought lots of friends and family to our side, many of whom we had not seen in years.  We had dear ones fly from all over the country to see us and attend.  It was so wonderful to be surrounded by love like that.  The music - assisted by Madi's old piano teacher as well as singers, organist, and conductor from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir  - brought us solace in a way that nothing else could have.  We buried Madi next to her grandpa and baby Frederick.  We still find great comfort knowing they are all together. After a whirlwind five days in Utah, we flew back to Boston and had a beautiful memorial here.  We were completely overcome at the outpouring of love and support we received.  Friends set up 500 chairs at the chapel and every seat was filled with family, school teachers, staff and administrators, friends from school and the community, work colleagues, doctors and nurses from the hospital, and our church family; they all came to memorialize our dear Madi. I could hardly look out when I was speaking because I felt so much gratitude and love. The music, though similar in many respects to the Utah service, took on a very personal element with Madi's friends- those who knew her well- singing on her behalf.  It was so incredibly touching to hear. We are lucky to have so many good things to say about Madi.  We are so proud of what she accomplished in her short life.   It was good to focus on the joy she brought to us, the good things we learned from her, and the hope we feel for the future.  I love this part of our faith.  I love knowing that death is not the end.

Even though we are using good tools to help sort through this mess doesn't mean mourning isn't very hard work! I often compare my grief to a 500 pound gorilla that crawls on my back every morning.  The gorilla pulls my hair and makes me cry.  It pinches my brain and makes me wince in pain at both good and bad memories. I get so tired of carrying the gorilla around that sometimes I get irritated at nothing or  get unexplainably tired.  I find myself walking in a haze a lot, trying to remember everything I did not have to even think about before.  I sometimes space out when my kids are talking to me because my gorilla puts his hands over my ears and blocks out anything except Madi memories replaying over and over in my head.  When the gorilla gets too heavy, I may snap at people I love who are also carrying their own gorillas and are equally annoyed.  Sometimes I ask my gorilla to get off and sit away from me for a while.  That usually doesn't work, but I still ask.  Regardless, it's often a zoo around our house with some or all of us crying and wishing the stupid gorillas would just leave us alone. Luckily there has been no literal poo-flinging, as I hear monkeys are wont to do.  But we are definitely wading through a lot of metaphorical crap on a daily basis.

The social scientist in me likes to distill complex emotional issues into statistical estimates because then they feel more comprehensible and orderly.  So if I had to estimate my grief percentages, I would say that I spend about 60% of my time carrying this heavy gorilla around with all the bad feelings that accompany it.  My activities include crying, watching old videos, crying some more, looking at pictures, smelling Madi's clothes, cuddling her stuffed animals, or reading her books. I also spend a good deal of this time staring off into space trying to figure out what just happened to us.  Then maybe 35% of the time is spent trying to pretend the gorilla is not there.  Usually this percentage involves me laughing and playing with my other kids, cuddling them on the couch, reading stories with them, and making plans for all the fun things we will do soon.  Kurt and I spend some of this time alone together at the temple, talking about logistics of life now, reminiscing, or watching Monk (typically falling asleep before the end). The other 5% is spent thinking about others: all the wonderful people who are still cradling us in love and support or others who are also carrying heavy loads right now.  Unfortunately, my tender heart can't take more than 5%  because it may explode from over-usage.  I hypothesize that over time, these percentages will shift.   Maybe the gorilla will lose some weight or maybe I will just get stronger muscles and deadened sensitivities to his poking and prodding.  Either way, I am tenaciously holding to my hope that the future will be brighter and lighter.

In our faith, we have a tradition of 18 and 19 year olds leaving their families and donating a year and a half or two years of their lives to God.  We call it serving a mission because they pay out of their own pockets and agree to do nothing but focus on others and teach about Christ.  In order to be allowed to serve, these young people must agree to abide by stringent rules about grooming, dress, behavior, and speech.  They are assigned to live and work with another missionary of the same gender (termed "companion").  Companions are forbidden to separate from each other, not even for a quick trip to the store.  In addition, they do not get to choose where to go, they are "called" to a specific area; anywhere from Nebraska to Ghana, Salt Lake City to Mexico City, Amazonian rain forests to Mediterranean beach fronts.  Mormon missionaries are literally EVERYWHERE :). Because these missions are voluntary, not everyone chooses to serve.  There are many Mormons who choose to sew seeds of goodness in their own spheres of influence at home.  I chose to go, hoping to experience a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood.  And it did not disappoint. I grew up a lot in my 19 months in Taiwan.  I learned (finally) how to converse in the Chinese language I'd studied for two years in college, I learned how to live without my parents (we did not return home for holidays and only called home on Mother's Day and Christmas), and I learned self-mastery in things I never thought I would master.

Over this last year of my life, I have reflected again and again on my mission.  I agreed to go knowing it was going to be hard and that I would miss home like crazy.  I often felt stifled and uncomfortable.  At times I disagreed with (and occasionally fumed at) arbitrary decisions made by boy leaders who were younger than me.  I sometimes longed to have 20 minutes without a companion right next to me.  In the process of all these hard things, though, I fell in love with the Taiwanese people, their history, culture, and language.  I found joy in focusing on others so completely, and I saw God in the faces of people around me.  I began to feel more Chinese than American by the time I left.  And I definitely cried more leaving my mission than I had when I left home.  

When I think of Madi's time here on earth, I keep thinking over and over that it was like a mission was for me.  Adjusting to earth life took a while, but once she got the hang of things, she really enjoyed it.  Life may have sometimes felt stifling and uncomfortable, and I know she sometimes fumed at us for unreasonable rules.  She savored her alone time.  She found joy in helping other people and fell in love with our family and friends.  I think she cried more about leaving earth than she cried when she got here. Now, she is home and if it's anything like it was when I returned home from my mission, it's fantastic.  She must have a sense of completion, a knowledge that she finished what she had been sent to do.  I imagine she misses us like I missed the people on my mission after I left.  I ached for them for a long time.  But at the same time, I never really wanted to go back. I had finished what I agreed to do and I was excited for the next milestones in my progression.

We find comfort in knowing she is home and likely very happy, learning new things, and helping our family on earth in ways she couldn't while she was here with us.  But it also is still so, so hard to live without her.  Everything is a reminder of how she is gone and life has to be different now.  

My kids are all processing things as best as they can.  They cry when they realize Madi isn't here to help them with things she used to help them with before.  They laugh when they think of something funny she used to do.  They do their best to honor Madi's memory and won't let us do anything they think Madi wouldn't want to do.  They are also feeling lonely with the loss of two playmates this winter.  They are begging us to adopt more kids, so I guess we are in the market now. :) 

Sigh.  It's all just so hard right now.  But we are moving forward, like it or not.  We are one month closer to holding our babies again and that is a sublime thing to think about.

We will post some of the funeral highlights soon for those who did not get to come.