In January 2018 I participated in Writing Your Grief, a 30-day workshop through Megan Devine’s Refuge in Grief. I’ve continued to write since then, but felt it was time for some more accountability and input, so I joined the next level workshop, Round Two. I’m sharing my work with a new group of grieving writers, so I’ve repeated some details you may have seen before if you’ve read some of my previous pieces. If you’re new, the basic explanation is that Megan sends out a writing prompt: generally some quotes on a topic along with her thoughts, and we are invited to write whatever comes up in response. Some of the writing is intensely private, as you might imagine, so you won’t see my work from every day posted here, but most will be.
With this prompt, I started off rambling, but then I feel like I got somewhere. I guess that's a pretty good metaphor for the whole journey so far.
Taking stock of my surroundings.
"You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path."—Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work
"There's a journey she must go on now, and she does not want to go." — Megan Devine
I'm already on the journey, on the path. I've been making my way through the dark woods now for 17 months. That would be one month for every year of my son's life, if he were still alive. But he's not, and that's how I entered the forest 17 months ago. I did not want to go on this journey. What I wanted didn't count.
My surroundings: It's not as dark as it was, and this place feels familiar now. I've learned the language and some of the customs. I can get by here.
"Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely." ― Edna St. Vincent Millay
It's warm and comforting to think I might be wise or lovely. I wonder why they are the ones going into the darkness.
Every journey starts at the beginning. So that's where I'll begin.
I went into the darkness on June 7, 2017. My son, Rader, was 15, and his next birthday was less than a week away. He had just finished 10th grade: it was a tough year, but now it was summer and he could relax and enjoy. He'd been on antidepressants since March. He seemed to be doing OK; we couldn't see any adverse reactions, and we stopped monitoring him so closely. We left him alone at home that evening. When he first started the meds, we were with him all the time. But he seemed to be making progress. We started to breathe again. Then he was gone. He had ended his life.
Looking back from a distance, I see what my surroundings were. Yes, it was dark. Everything was unfamiliar. And I was completely unprepared. I carried nothing with me that would be of any use for survival. I had no applicable skills or abilities. I knew in the abstract that people died by suicide. I knew my child was depressed and anxious. I knew the medications carried the possibility of suicidal ideation in young people. I knew there was such a thing as the dark. But knowing that something exists and being engulfed by it are very very different.
Yet even in the darkest woods of Rader's loss, I never felt what he felt. From the beginning I had some hope that there was a journey to be taken, that there was life to live, even if it looked nothing like I imagined or ever wanted. And that there would be some value in my new existence, that I would find a worthwhile way to move in it, even if there was no way out. The weight of the thought that he had no hope at all, saw no light at all, felt completely alone, is crushing. That even in my worst moments, I still was so far from feeling the inescapable despair he felt. My heart rips open at the thought he could see no other option, no way to keep living another moment. He didn't know that what seemed so real to him, the only reality he could conceive, would pass if he could just hold on.
I don't know that I was wise when I went into the darkness. But I believe with my whole heart that there is wisdom to be found there. Even if I just learned to survive the day, and when I have the strength, to shine a light for the next person who shows up, dazed and stumbling as I had been.