Grief

Grief been a rare visitor to our house these past few years. Since moving back to Minnesota, I lost both my grandfathers and Aaron lost his grandmother. Those losses were felt very personally, but we tried to shield the kids as much as we could from our personal emotions and let them feel their way through it without the added pain of watching their parents grieve.

Then we lost the Lucky cat this summer, to a semi on the highway. Emma took that one especially hard as she rescued him from near starvation and spent 3 years keeping him healthy. The initial discovery caused a torrent of raw emotion, as I expected, but I didn't expect her to feel the aftershocks for as long as she did. For months, she would become emotional unexpectedly, breaking into tears in odd places and strange moments. I ran out of new ways to comfort her, so mostly I would just hug her when she had a bad day. It is so hard to see your child hurting; in some ways a physical ailment is easier to manage than an emotional one.

I think as parents we take on the role of being strong for them; I too felt the loss of our tough little tomcat, but I thought it would make it even harder on Emma to see me crying. So I did the tried and true "circle of life" and "he was happy while he was here" and "he'll be waiting for us in Heaven" and swallowed my emotion and patted her on the back and hoped her heart would heal quickly. I thought if she could see me being strong it would somehow give her strength.

Then on one unexpected Monday evening, Grief came calling, and this time it came for me. We were finishing up dinner and I was sitting at the table decompressing from the day and contemplating the dishes when I decided to scroll through Facebook. I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook; I hate reading posts from people who use it as soapbox for political drivel, but I truly love to be connected personally to people who are far from me geographically but close to my heart.

I am connected to Colorado in the best way through Facebook; I have watched former students get jobs, get married, have babies, and travel the world. I've watched my friends' children grow up, celebrated their triumphs, commiserated on their woes and been able to stay connected to the dozens of the peripheral people from Buena Vista who helped create such a beautiful feeling of belonging in that town.

It was Facebook, then, that told me about the tragedy in Buena Vista that took the lives of my friend Dawna, her husband Dwayne, her daughter Kiowa and her nephews. By now the story of the rock slide is familiar to most, as it made national headlines.

Nearly every day there is a tragedy to read about on the news, and you can't help but feel a kind of detached empathy for the people affected. But there is a definite difference when the tragedy hits a little closer to home. There is a pivotal moment when Those People become Your People, and nothing prepares you for that.

Dawna and I coached together, and honestly I didn't know her nearly as well as I could have, but we still shared bus rides and practices and long talks about kids and coaching during the 3 years we worked together. And through Facebook she remained my friend; I watched her babies grow up; I watched Dawna develop as a relay coach and as a photographer. She was forever filling up my news feeds of sunrises and sunsets on the mountains that I miss so much. She posted so many pictures of her kids I felt like I knew them, even though they were really little when I last watched them tear around the track field and jump on the high jump pits.

Sometimes people say that loss feels like a punch to the stomach - and you know, that is true. It takes the wind right out of you, and disbelief mingles with heartache and the shock of it is paralyzing. Dawna had posted some of Kiowa's senior pictures just few days earlier, and I thought about opening up a chat message to tell her how beautiful Kiowa had grown to be, and how much Dawna had grown as a photographer too. But I was busy and settled for just "liking" some of the photos, putting that conversation off for a day that would never come.

Sitting there in the kitchen, tears came unbidden and I felt emotion wash over me; I can't remember the last time I cried like that. Thick, choking sobs and of course Emma was the first to pass by and see me like that. I was helpless to it; I felt a combination of horror at the circumstances of their passing, of regret that I hadn't worked harder to cultivate our friendship, and guilt at the strength of my sorrow. That last one is hard to put into words...I felt guilty almost like I didn't deserve to feel so terrible. I hadn't seen her in person in 7 years, hadn't spoken on the phone or visited or anything. I watched her life, that's all. I "liked" her posts, but never called to talk about them. Facebook gave me a window to her world but I rarely stepped out of my routine to make the personal connections that I know are important. I think the guilt, more than anything, fueled the raw emotion I was feeling now.

Emma seemed shocked too; I know she's never seen me like that and I really couldn't make it stop. Her big brown eyes were enormous as she came over and leaned on my shoulder. Her arms went around me and she just said, "I'm so sorry, Mom." What a precious moment: being held and comforted by the child I work so hard to protect and hold and comfort. It occurred to me that she doesn't need my strength; she is plenty strong, and maybe what she needs is for me to be real. To let her see that pain is universal to all of us, and that it's okay to be affected and altered by it.

It is also hard to be far away from those I needed to grieve with; that is one more thing that Facebook gave me. It allowed me to share in the process even if I couldn't be there to light the candles and remember my friend the way she deserved to be remembered. A few hours later when my friend Erin called, I was ready to talk and able to breathe a little as she filled me in on what was happening there.

The next few days were blurry; I was planning our school's Homecoming with the Student Council and it was nice to be really really busy and let the sharpest edges soften a little. I did a little digging and found a scrapbook that the Track team made for me at our farewell party. Dawna had taken most of the pictures, and she'd written a little note inside the cover: "I learned so much from you, how to be an inspiration to these girls. And I will continue that when you are gone, I promise." That is a promise she kept - her girls loved her, and that has been so evident in the outpouring of love that came in the following days.

It's only been a couple of weeks, but I still have unexpected moments when it creeps up on me and I find my eyes filling with tears or a lump developing in my throat. I think it really is a lot of things that contribute to my sorrow; the depth of the loss is so great - it wasn't one or two, but five people lost. The devastation of Dawna having to leave two of her children behind to carry on without her. The vibrancy of Kiowa-Rain who was only 18 (10 years old in my mind - always) and had her whole life in front of her. Her husband Dwayne was a pillar of strength and integrity for the football team he helped coach, and being a teacher myself I know how much leadership a man like that can provide for developing young men.

Somewhere mixed in to all of that are my personal connections to the Falls where they perished; Aaron and I hiked the same trail a dozen times. I have a framed photo of us sitting among the boulders next to the falls with our dogs, looking very happy and very very young.

As hard as it may be to see anything positive come from what seems so senseless, I think I will dwell in the gifts they left behind, and spend my time praying for the health and strength of the family that remains. And moving forward, I think I am deciding that it is okay to be real for my kids. It might even be imperative that they watch me experience real sorrow and deal with it in a healthy way. Is there no end to the lessons we learn in this lifetime?