Cracked Open

Jake was dead. He was 17 and a twin. It was two weeks prior to high school graduation.  A Saturday afternoon hike to Inspiration Point with friends became a deadly encounter with heat stroke for him.  First responders dashed up to the summit and got him to Cottage Hospital, but it was too late.  Revival efforts failed and as one young man’s heart stopped beating, countless others shattered into pieces.  This is what happens when death takes someone we love.

I had met Jake a few times as well as his twin, Julia, and his older brother, Jessie.  It is their mom, Jenni, who is my colleague and close friend.  I still don’t remember how I heard of Jake’s death, but I do know I went to the family home immediately.  What do you say to a mother who has just lost her son?

There are no words that can bring comfort with the possible exception of “I love you.” We try ineptly but we haven’t been taught how to be with those in great grief.  Talk to anyone that has had a loss and they will tell you some of the things that people said in an attempt to be supportive that have often only increased the pain. Cliches like, “Only the good die young, “bring no comfort to anyone. Phrases like “He’s in a better place” or” He’s with the angels now” are common and feeble attempts to offer something to help.  Not only do these phrases suppose a religious view, they do nothing to support the stricken. In many cases it enrages them but often they don’t have the energy to speak.

I drove to the house and knocked. I hugged Jenni as she reached for me, and I let her weep on my shoulder.  I followed her lead.  Soon she was recounting the details.  I only asked a few clarifying questions to ensure I understood what she was saying.  I stayed for a bit, but lots was going on. More and more people were pouring in.   I knew I would keep coming back to check in on her and the others and see what was in the moment for me to do.  Mostly it was being there and listening.

Comforting those in shock from a traumatic death has no how- to handbook.  I serve as a chaplain for our local fire department.  My main role is to come to the scene of a death when requested and comfort the family.  The best preparation is to stay present, observe, respond, and offer what might seem necessary.

This could be tissues, water, or calling someone.  It can be saying prayers for comfort (if requested) or holding a hysterical sister.  It can be a go-between, calling someone’s workplace to say they won’t be in for a few days, or meeting the arriving family member who has just come on the scene.

One thing it can never be is someone trying to “fix” the situation.  More than anything, grief needs to be witnessed and honored. Grief needs to be tended.  Each person has their own unique journey.  My real job is to keep working my own inner emotions, my own remnants of grief, so that I don’t bring my baggage into what is before me. It’s an ongoing process.

For Jenni, I did the things most of us know to do when a family is in crisis, particularly around death.  I brought a meal for the family.  I checked back and I also gave space. I had some specialized grief resources, like a body worker who was also a trained counselor, and she took advantage of them.  I gifted her and her daughter a massage.  Jenni was no stranger to mourning.  She is a funeral director and deals with grieving people every day.  Yet nothing truly prepares us for death.

I have watched many families who had a loved one terminally ill either in a hospital or on hospice think they were readying themselves for the inevitable.  The mind takes in the facts or refuses to.  Each person’s journey is a discovery and a process.  There may be commonalities but there is no tried-and-true roadmap, no 5 stage signposts for the experience.  Grief is like a fingerprint or a snowflake.

What is true in my experience is that nothing can prepare us for the last breath.  Sometimes the bedside experience is peaceful, family gathered, all united in love.  Even immediately afterwards there can be a reverence, even a mystical sort of experience when some believe the Soul leaves the body.  The Celts called it a thin place in the veil between the seen and the unknown. It happens at births as well.

Inevitably people will tell me within a day or two that they cannot believe their loved one is really gone. They thought they were braced for what was coming but it still feels like a shock.  With sudden death, it is a shock.  No anticipatory grief to imagine life without someone.  Instead, it’s like being flattened by a big rig.

Life is forever changed without warning, and you are shattered.

On one of those early return visits to Jenni I do remember her request. “I need your words.  When we do a ceremony for Jake, I need you to speak.  Will you do that for me?”

There was no date or time set. It was still too raw.

” Jenni, I will do whatever you ask, whenever you need me.”

Within a month, the date for Jake’s Celebration of Life was set. Jenni was intent on having it upbeat with a Hawaiian theme and decorations of photos from Jake’s life adorning each table.  It was going to be outside next to the mortuary chapel.  Jake was famous for drawing his own unique smiley face on everything.  Jenni got it tattooed on her wrist.  She made keychains and stickers with the image, with the focus on Jake’s joy and creativity  as the thing we all remembered.

I had a long time to think about what I could possibly say that would make any impact, that might penetrate the pallor of grief, despite the attempts to be positive. I am a woman of faith and so I asked for guidance and direction.  If I could be an instrument for a message instead of a creator of one, that was what I wanted.

I honestly cannot recall how this all happened, but I remembered there was a Japanese custom about mending broken pottery.  Thank you, Google.  Here is an excerpt from my words:

The Japanese have a beautiful tradition called” kitsukuroi ” which means “golden repair”.  When a treasured item of pottery gets broken, they carefully collect the pieces with the intention of mending it.   However, as the pieces are assembled for repair there is a lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum.  As we collect the pieces of the broken hearts among us, let us realize that our own golden healing is the power, the infinite and unfailing power of LOVE.   As a community of family and friends, it is ours to stand by one another and offer the binding power of this love.

Since that day, in much of my grief support work, I often share this concept also known as kintsugi. Kintsugi translates to “golden journey” emphasizing the joining of the broken pieces.  A variation of it saved me.

In 1989 in New York, after 4 deaths within 8 weeks, with one once a week for three hellish weeks in May, I felt totally broken. Only one of these deaths was anticipated-yet another friend taken by AIDS.  The others were the big rig runovers- suicide, car crash, stroke.

I was a working zombie because being busy and immersing myself in the day to day demands of a homeless shelter for teens allowed me to run away from the pain I couldn’t begin to fathom.   I found a card somewhere with the image of a rose growing from one of the cracks in a heart that was reassembled from the wreckage.  I kept it on my desk as a symbol of hope though clueless about how any new growth was possible.  A more organic version of the Japanese approach.  It would be decades before I learned about the golden repair.

Recently I found yet another card.  The title said Wabi Sabi Soul and the back of the card explained that Wabi-Sabi meant flawed beauty, the beauty of imperfection.  Here is the poem that accompanied the card with no author cited.

It cracked, then broke open

I thought it was ruined forever

So I just sat with it for awhile

Studying the dust + rubble that were

Impossible to fit back in and no longer belonged to it.

 

I finally understood

That it was all mine

The wholeness + the brokenness

What remained + what fell away

I held each fallen piece tenderly

Whispered my gratitude into it

And said goodbye to each one

I looked at this new form

With its fracture + openings

And begin to fill each space with gold

In beautiful silent reverence

 

Those who are grieving and seek my support seem to find some comfort in this notion of being healed with gold.  One thing that happens in kintsugi is that the very act of adding the gold in between the cracks makes the vessel enlarged.  As a grief tender, when you are holding space for a grieving person, trust that your love is the gold and that the heart will be enlarged in the repair. Or just maybe a rose will appear.