Getting Up

Last week I told you about a discussion I had many years ago with my book club about the mother of the main character in the book The Thirteenth Tale. She'd lost a child and was bedridden with grief even years later. This left her surviving child essentially motherless. My book club was indignant. Their basic response, what kind of mother does that?

Well, I did…for a time. When my son Jay died I was overwhelmed with grief and unwilling to get up and do anything even though I had two surviving children. You can read more about that here.

Here was the crux of my challenge: Getting up felt like moving on. It felt like getting over this. It felt like a rejection of Jay. Because if he’s down, I’m down. If he’s out, I’m out...right? Because a good mom is right there with her kids. And I wanted so badly to turn back the clock and have a shot at being there for him in his darkest hour. So if I couldn’t be there for him then, I’d be there with him now.

On the other hand, not getting up felt like abandonment of my girls. This is the darkest hour that they have ever known in their lives. How could I leave them there to figure it all out for themselves? And if I hated not being there for Jay then, how could I justify not being there for them now? That wasn’t right.

I was wedged between two seemingly unyielding positions – getting up for the girls felt like a rejection of Jay. Staying down for Jay felt like betrayal of the girls. This mother, who felt an overwhelming desire to do right by all her kids, was horribly stuck.

In my lifetime I have demonstrated a remarkable propensity to ruminate. Stuff that regular people will process and make a decision on in two seconds, I will mull over and over and over relentlessly. I’ve wondered time and again why I just can’t figure things out quickly and then just move on! But I always get somewhere in the process of stewing. I arrive at something—a decision, a stance – that I can live with and makes sense to me.

Sometimes, after hours (days?...okay, yes, even weeks) of contemplation, I come out of my thinking and share my revelation and this is the response I get from many of my friends, “Of course!” That conclusion was obvious to them all along. But for me, getting there is the hardest part. I think that’s because whatever conclusion I come to, it has to be strong and heartfelt and, most importantly, consistent with everything I believe in.

So while my book club could read two paragraphs and snap to the judgement, “You gotta get up!”, I struggled to find the explanation that justified that decision. The challenge was truly in the how – how do I get up for the girls without turning my back on Jay?

Here's what finally made sense.

Not getting up meant the death of so much more than Jay. It would be the death of this family and my girls’ future. It would be a permanent marker in their timeline that’s far more menacing than the one that’s already there. Now that marker reads, “2016: the year my brother died.” If I didn’t get up, it would read, “2016: the year my brother died and our family was never the same again.” We have endured tremendous loss already. I cannot allow for more.

Also, If I didn’t get up, the bit about our family never being the same again – that would be on me. But my girls might not realize that and, instead, they could very easily blame Jay. They could get angry and put it on him, “My brother took his own life and our family was never ever the same.”  That was unacceptable. This was not Jay’s fault. He got sick. That sickness led to his death. He didn’t do this. It happened. To protect Jay – to protect his memory in their minds – I had to get up.

I love all of my children with all my heart and I want to honor each of them in everything that I do. For my girls, I want them to know an enriching life with their family. I want to make sure that they continue to feel love and know joy in our life together through family dinners and family vacations and family jokes and family traditions.

For Jay, I want him to be remembered at his best. I want his sisters to treasure their memories of him. I want them to think of him with great love and hold him close in their hearts. He deserves that. They deserve that.

Getting up is how I could live out my deepest love for all of my children. 

Finally, I'd made sense of it. Finally, I got up.