Tag: family

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Grief and Comic Books

My sons used Christmas money to explore our favorite comic shop today. I remembered how I discovered the Hero’s Journey in a similar place, feeding my imagination for what one person could accomplish with the proper will.

We came home with piles of adventures and closed the day with a viewing of Avengers: Endgame.

The heroes who had survived cataclysmic defeat are the archetypes of grief. Captain America remains the eternal optimist, the unshakable hero who can only believe that good will come. Hawkeye gives in to darkest resentment, taking out his pain on the reality that has betrayed him. Black Widow works and works and works, she works herself to death fighting against the tragedy. Iron Man escapes from the past into his new reality, he discovers what he had before he lost so much. Thor escapes into self medication and pity, drinking himself into solitude.

Each of these archetypes has lived in me at times, but there is one character that I most aspire to personify. Bruce Banner turned inward, he stopped fighting the monster inside. He spent time with the Hulk. He learned about it. He learned about his darkest parts. In doing so he integrated his most destructive power with a mind focused on the good.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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The Best Christmas

Holidays are where I notice the biggest changes in our lives.

The house isn’t as colorful as it has been in the past and it isn’t filled with wonderful smells of food made with loving care.

But it is so peaceful. Christmas music plays while my boys quietly build their Lego sets and I lay back in bed, taking time for myself. They were excited for the most modest gifts. I feel like I know them better than ever, that our loss and struggles have brought us closer together.

All our fortunes bloom out of the unfortunate.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Don’t Overdo

We don’t have a tree up, I haven’t acquired stocking stuffers, and I’m not sure where the stockings are.

These were all on my mind as I pulled this card from don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements deck.

Now I’m thinking of Halloween. Mary was Tippi Hedren from Hitchcock’s The Birds one year before we met. She took bloody pecks out of a stylish blazer, wired birds around her, and had more birds torturing her hair. It was brilliant.

We overdid it all. Costumes, hikes, meals, decorations…we never sat for more than an evening by the fire. Even that would be rife with problem solving and planning.I don’t know if that’s what left her depleted and unable to fight off the infection, or whether she knew in her soul that her time would not be long. Both could be true.

I’m finding my pace. I’m learning how to rest.

I’m going to do my nest today.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Night Out at the Bar

Alcoholism.

I’ve written very little about it since questioning whether I was an alcoholic almost a year ago.

I stopped drinking on Halloween night, 2018. It was two months before I felt my mind begin to clear. I was entering a romanic relationship with a woman who had a history with addict partners. With her help I stared down two decades of unhealthy patterns and concluded that I had a serious problem. In truth, maintaining the relationship was a significant motivation in my quest to make myself better. That and being a better father to my sons drove me towards therapy and weekly (at minimum) AA meetings. It was all helpful. It was all necessary for me to spend serious time exploring my past and working through my guilt and shame. Why would I quit drinking for this woman and my sons, yet I hadn’t for my wife and those same sons?

I was missing a key element to my healing and it wasn’t until the romance was ended beyond my wishes that I discovered that key. Suddenly single again, I set to meditating and reading more. I picked up Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. It spoke immediately to the hole inside me. I was lacking in a love for myself that was crippling my desire for self improvement. I took on the daily affirmations and listened with care to my self-critical voices. I found inside myself an ability to heal. I didn’t need the therapy sessions or AA meetings anymore, I needed to spend that time expressing love and care for myself. I found an internal drive to push away the things that did not nourish me. Identifying as an “alcoholic” was no longer appropriate. I had broken the patterns and swam in the darkness that had lead me to self medicate. I loved myself too much to do more harm to my mind, body, and soul with alcohol.

I went out last night and danced among the drinkers. There were friends there, but I was primarily there on my own. A lot of it was uncomfortable. I still feel like widowhood is a contagion, that people are too vulnerable to come near that pain. It’s often easier to be around strangers. The music was good and I fell into the bliss of moving to it. It didn’t matter who I was, or wasn’t, dancing with, I was experiencing the moment just for myself.

Not drinking turned out to be the easy part.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Still Present

Mary visited me again.

This inspirational card has floated around our lives for more than a decade. I don’t know where Mary found it and I never paid much attention to it on our dresser or her nightstand.

Having no clear connection to our life together, I was tempted to toss it in my efforts to make room in our lives. Physical health and wellbeing has been paramount in our family transformation and I didn’t think I needed a reminder. I checked myself on how easily bad habits form and old patterns return and placed the card between our kitchen and dining room.

A day or so earlier, I was at Lanikai Wellness Studio for a yoga class and purchased a deck of cards based on Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements. I have a long to-read list and thought this would be a good way to bring Ruiz’s wisdom into my life. I also hoped they would provide material for a new blog series.

I sat down this morning to flip through the cards for the first time. This same card was in the first ten I read. We didn’t own the book. We never discussed Ruiz. I didn’t discover him until after Mary passed and there’s no indication of his name or the book title on the cards.

This is my first real holiday season alone. A friend buoyed me through my first Christmas as a widower, but that friendship has been lost. As much as I trust where I am and the good things that are to come, the loneliness is weighing on me.

This week I came home from a brutal two hours of soccer. I was hammered in goal and on the field, nothing seemed to work in the back-to-back games. I was wiped out emotionally and physically. I was useless to my sons as they warmed up leftovers and served themselves dinner. I wondered what I was doing wrong, how I got to this place.

I had a dream that night that Mary had been in the stands watching our boys and watching me play. I ran over to the edge of the field to ask for help with something small. It startled me and I woke angry. I envisioned the stands again and I took her away. It wasn’t like a dream. I can see the empty spot at the end of the metal bench now. I could have told her how much I loved her, how blessed I am to have had her, how important she was, and is, to me, or I could have just smiled and enjoyed a moment seeing her again. But I erased her. I was angry at myself for a foolish fantasy.

So she’s back this morning telling me to take care of my body. She always protected soccer for me. She would come home from a long day of work, start making dinner, and send me out the door, no matter if the boys were being disagreeable or impatient, or if coats were still on the floor from our afternoon adventures. She was always there later to hear about my frustrations and successes on the field. I can hear her drowsy, mumbled, “I’m listening,” as she fought off sleep after a late game. She was listening, she was always present. She was so good at being present that she still manages it from time to time.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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A Marriage Complete

There is a criticism of marriage that essentially states that the only marriage deemed successful by our society is one that ends with the death of one or both partners. Longevity trumps health in our most valued relationships.

I have the questionable honor of having had a successful marriage.

Beyond having made it to the natural dissolution of our union, I believe that Mary and I achieved all we were meant to together on this Earth. We set out with few goals and accomplished all of them, and much more, in almost 11 years of marriage.

We wanted two children and to have a stay-at-home parent. That goal expanded into a home education lifestyle and a focus on family wellbeing that we had not imagined. It created a framework for us to survive and thrive through a difficult loss.

We had rules to keep decisions, disagreements, and conflicts between the two of us, to always turn to those rifts and work to heal them. Through those rules we built an indomitable team. We counted on each other’s checks to improve ourselves and our marriage. I hold this model close to my heart and apply the direct mastering of conflict as often as I am able.

There must be things left undone or unsaid, correct? A widow friend of mine commented that we seem drawn to those ideas that were sown but never harvested. Maybe our dreams weren’t grand enough, but I can’t think of a thing we wanted to do, yet did not “get around to.” A live recording of a Nine Inch Nails song came on yesterday and ambushed me with happy and sad tears. We saw them in a technologically and theatrically stunning show in Chicago. I thought about all the concerts, the theater, the modest traveling. I cannot think of any significant opportunity for ourselves as a couple or as a family that we passed on for another time. There was something in us that knew we only had so long together.

When we had no reason to believe it was our last few months together we got baptized as a family and shared special hikes and personal moments alone.

The end was the end. It was Mary’s story completed and the chapter of our marriage closed.

We had no aspirations beyond marriage. I’m still trying to find my purpose, my story.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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An Unlikely, Art-Filled Life

These pictures were taken three years apart and neither one by me.

Delaware Art Museum, 2016. Reprinted for the DE Creative Kids Passport, 2019.
Peninsula Gallery, 2019

Unschooling has been the most rewarding journey of my life. I still don’t like the word “unschool” and didn’t know it when I started exposing my sons to art before the youngest could walk. I had no history or education with art, I was sent by my wife as she knew there was no way I would be a “stay-at-home” dad. Story times and family-friendly tours and activities got us into museums on a regular basis and I quickly saw the magic that was happening in my sons’ lives.

Delaware Art Museum, 2016
Brandywine River Museum of Art, 2012
Biggs Museum of American Art, 2015
Biggs Museum of American Art, 2015
Meeting the Twin Poets at Delaware Contemporary, 2018
Shakespeare at Winterthur Garden, Museum, and Library, 2013
Terrific Tuesday at Winterthur Garden, Museum, and Library, 2014

An intentional learning lifestyle has taken us back again and again to our favorite galleries, where there is always something new to discover.

As we return to all these places in 2019 to complete our DE Creative Kids Passport, I will try not to be overwhelmed by the memories that we have made.

God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason

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Hard Questions

Thank God we had a winning soccer match tonight.

Otherwise, I may not have been able to field challenging questions from my ten-year-old. He opened with mumbling and I was an impatient prick until he fell to tears and said, “I’m afraid of what happens when people die.” This wasn’t just about his mom, I could see it in his eyes, he was contemplating everyone’s death on an empathetic level that would be overwhelming to anyone. I remember contemplating pain in a similar way when I was his age, it was so frightening that I closed off my empathetic self for decades.

So I was faced with the light task of not ruining my son’s compassionate path to adulthood. I held him and we talked easily about Heaven, the inevitability of death, and the power we have to choose how to face it. He’s a smart kid, he’s worked out much of this, but needed to cry through it a little. We turned to the subject of Mary and how he thought he didn’t properly say goodbye. The last thing he really remembers about her was watching the first half of the Super Bowl in the hospital. With the Eagles winning, it was a nicely exaggerated happy moment.

I asked him to remember all the times Mom said, “I love you,” and how many times he said the same to her. I told him, “Mom taught me about always doing this because we never know when we won’t have another chance.”

We talked about how he and his brother bravely came to the hospital and faced the news that Mom probably wouldn’t survive. It took them all day to be ready to see her and they stood shoulder to shoulder to tell her goodnight.

I told him that it was the first step towards Mary’s peace with dying. She’d find peace with many other friends and family over the next 36 hours.

There were more questions about the details of my comings and goings and what happened at the hospital while they were at home. We both got our tears out.

I thank God again for the wisdom these circumstances has afforded me and my sons. We’re not letting this break us, but allowing it to make us stronger.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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Solo Dadding at Mountain Jam

This one was intimidating. Assumptions had crept in as I planned and envisioned our spring and summer adventures. I expected to have more support, a co-parent, to teamwork on grand excursions. I thought things might be getting easier. After 16 months of having my parental assumptions repeatedly blown up one would think that I should be used to this; or better yet, that I would give up on assumptions and the future. But I can be a slow learner.

Cap the dissolving of expectations with waves of grief and a busy unschool schedule, and I wasn’t feeling up to the task of four nights of festival camping. Especially since this music festival, Mountain Jam in Bethel, New York, would feature bands that had significant ties to memories of my late wife, Mary.

Screw all that. I have slept in tents since I was an infant, attended day-long festivals since I was a preteen, survived the riots of Woodstock ’99, logged thousands of hours alone on the road with my sons, and honed my situational intuitions over those many hours. I set my back straight and climbed into our Dodge Caravan with confidence.

The road smoothed and eased before us. The trip was shorter than expected. Somewhat miraculously, an online friend spotted us as we drove by her camp site and hollered. The rain came down and the van got stuck in the mud, but, with help, we got the tent up and had ourselves set for the first night of music before sundown. We continued to find the right people at the right times. Friendly staff and volunteers, helpful young people, generous vendors, fun and engaging performers, and very special families made for easy going days and nights.

Above all, I was reminded of how good my sons are at this. They made friends, charmed adults, and carved their own unique experience out of the weekend’s offerings. For my own part, I simplified personal obligations and expectations, enjoyed as much music as I could consume, and let myself have a whole lot of fun. We stayed up late, danced and played recklessly, and took care of business when circumstances called for it.

I came away from the weekend with my shoulders back and my head high. Our story seems impossible, I saw that in many faces as I told it to new friends, but there is an immense power in mastering an impossible task. Or just in taking it on and failing, as I have many times.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

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To My Goddess Nieces

I have five nieces. At least two of them have found me spontaneously crying this year. All of them have been present for me and my children during a most challenging and miraculous time.

When I met Mary she was already an aunt to these wonderful little girls. She was Aunt Mary.

Mary and these girls fueled a fire in me that had burned since I was ten years old, a desire to be a dad.

I wrestled and played silly games with the youngest and argued politics with the teenagers.

After my sons, they’ve become the closest connection I have with Mary in the world. Their memories and tributes to their aunt share much of what I remember and always bring new energy to fading images. Their youthfulness honors Mary’s and mirrors the attitude I have towards my journey.

I went to a concert with niece Emily this weekend. She’s 25, the same age I was when I met Aunt Mary. We talked about music and all the bands Mary and I had introduced her to, about how she copied all the music from my laptop one day and I gave her a speech about “unearned knowledge.”

Just before we met up, I was ambushed by the thought that Mary should be here for this, that it was flat out wrong that she wasn’t driving to D.C. with us to see Beats Antique. I wept and it still feels a little wrong. Mary and I were most connected when we listened to, danced to, and discussed music. From Patsy Cline and Cécile McLorin Salvant to T.Rex and Rage Against the Machine, I never knew anyone with musical tastes as broad as mine until I met Mary. Although…the nieces are getting there.

I discovered Beats early in 2012 and quickly shared the music with the nieces. In 2013, Emily lost her stepfather, my dear brother-in-law, Rich. That same week I talked Mary into backing Beats Antique’s Kickstarter campaign for their A Thousand Faces – Act 1 album. It’s a musical reinterpretation of Joseph Campbell’s “A Hero’s Journey.” In widowhood and single-parenthood I have cast myself as the hero of my own story.

I have been blessed and tested by many powerful goddesses on my journey. Mary still serves as a guide through my nieces. Each of them shows me pieces of Mary’s light and brightens my darkest paths.


Have a God blessed day,
Jason