Still Grieving

The following continues my reflections on the sudden death of one of my students.

Dealing with grief for both myself and my students will continue to be an ongoing process. In my research on the topic, I have found some interesting sources. The Grief Blog is a wonderful resource for information and provides a forum for questions and stories. I was impressed with the professional outreach the site provides.

Searching for reliable sources with reputable contributors, I found a comprehensive article at the Scholastic site which was clear and helpful in explaining the importance of mourning, a society’s controlled and formal process of responding to death, and how mourning differs from the emotional grieving that a person experiences and, frequently, has little ability to control. Directed at teachers, Perry and Rubenstein’s article covered a number of questions succinctly. It ends with the following insight:

“Always remember that the loss does not go away, but the way children experience loss will change with time, hopefully maturing in ways that make it easier to bear. The traumatic loss of a parent, a sibling, and a peer will always be with these children. With time, love, and understanding, however, children can learn to carry the burdens of traumatic loss in ways that will not interfere with their healthy development.”

Sometimes wallowing in pain feels good, because it is better than the numb feeling that accompanies grief. However, young people are not always aware that emotions can come in cycles. They are not prepared to wait for the uncomfortable time of grief to pass. They are, rightfully, frightened that it will unexpectedly resurface. How vulnerable they are! Youth feel all experiences with such overpowering intensity. It is when they are most vulnerable that they need the most help dealing with their pain.

Stages of grief are not like steps on a ladder or stairs; the stages are more like rooms from a central hall that the person who is grieving moves, wanders, or crashes into at various times. I have to remember this when my students are having a hard time.

A Personal Connection

Shortly after Christmas I was sitting over a leisurely breakfast with my husband. Our children and guests had not yet risen, and we were discussing the various flotsam and jetsam of wrappings and feelings from the holiday. We entered into the uneasy subject of what was different about this holiday.: who had been able to join us and who was missing. Jon mentioned his mother. I said, “It’s been almost a year.”

There was silence. I watched Jon’s face blotch and soften into a blush of deep sorrow. He had entered a space where the very air pressed pain and loss into his cheeks and eyes. For that moment, we were back by Edith’s bedside, and Jon was holding his mother’s hand again.

We have rooms of sorrow next to rooms of wonder and joy.

The orchid from Edith’s funeral is sending off a blossom shoot. I have moved it to a new window; it will be blooming when my daughter Juliet delivers her baby. I wonder how close the great-granddaughter’s birthday will be to Edith’s.

Time does not erase grief. Over time, however, I have learned that I can touch and handle past grief without the fear that the pain will destroy my life. It is not an easy lesson.

Snow Angel

This has been a long hard day. Last night, I received a phone call with the news that one of my students had suddenly died. I went to school knowing that I would need to try to help my students through a very sad day. My job as a teacher was hard because, like my students, I was also mourning.

It is true that each person approaches loss in a different way, but I wanted to give my students an opportunity to step outside of spinning disorientation that came with the unexpected loss of a classmate and friend. So I told them, for homework, to make a snow angel and then write about it for 5 minutes.

The assignment had been easy to think of. All day I watched the snow gently filling the air and softening the view. I longed to leave the ordered desks and rooms and go into the clean cold space that the trees seemed to hold waiting for me. It was evening when I realized that I too needed to complete the assignment.

I put down my purse and shopping bag, found a clean patch of snow by the garage that the dog had not pranced through, and lay down (sans hat). The snow was still sifting down, powdered-sugar style. I remembered that some of the fun of making a snow angel was looking up at the sky while doing it. There was an obvious break in the low clouds. As I looked straight into the sky’s night face, it seemed to open a bit of goodness-knows to me.

I could feel an ice crust under the 4 inches of powder that I swept away into wings. As a kid it had always been important to have your friend pull you up so as not to disturb the angel too much. But I was alone, a grandma in her heeled boots and long down coat (sans hat) who had placed herself in a cloud of snow, between earth and heaven, to make a snow angel.

Such is wonder and awe at the fragility of life. Such is breath and prayer and pulse of awareness. This is how one prays joy to muffle the pain of loss, with the awareness that snow and death are between earth and heaven.

I pushed myself up, and one hand crunched through the left wing. Brushing snow from my hair, I looked at the shadowed marking realizing that in the morning it would be no more than I ripple under the new snowfall. My snow angel would exist for a very short time.

There had been a time when I would have swished my nylon-padded legs all over the yard to place a multitude of angels under the sky. Later, there were the times I watched my children giggling – tongues out to catch the falling snow – while their arms and legs fanned joy. Tonight, I used one short-lived impression as a prayer for my student.

Fragile as a snow angel. We did not know how fragile she was.