Over The Last Hill Just To Get Started
Twist and turns on the grief road
Things are not unfolding quite as it seemed when I wrote this blog 3 months ago — as I have said grief doesn’t ask for your input on timing. Hike over some hills with me to understand why.
I love to hike and have logged hundreds of miles in the Appalachians, Rockies, and other beautiful places. In 2013, our Boy Scout crew including my son Daniel and I walked out of the Abreu Camp at Philmont nearing the end of our 10 day trek through the New Mexico Rockies. The map predicted three distinct climbs, as we needed to gain altitude to camp that night near the famous Tooth of Time. Under a crisp sun and cutting through fresh mountain air, we ascended the slopes.
Reaching the top of the third climb was exhausting but exhilarating, and we sat down for water and rest and enjoyed the great views back towards our morning departure. However, the terrain ahead of us, though flat, seemed to go on forever to the horizon. No real altitude left to climb — but the end was not in sight. We were not done, and in some ways we were just beginning.
It hit me this is a apt but unexpected metaphor for where I am at in my grief journey 14 months after Daniel’s suicide. I have climbed all the named hills and mountains that immediately block your path once something like this happens. Each required emotional and physical energy to conquer.
The first few were as sharp and steep as man can bear. We called family and friends and delivered the awful news. We slogged uphill for 18 days in the ICU, and made a final decision to withdraw life support and let him go. Then we ascended the funeral mountain. All of these of course for us occurred during April 2020 COVID max lockdown. I think of it as climbing those peaks at super high altitude with extremely thin air. Why? The pandemic had taken away the life giving oxygen of human contact.
The next mountains self-arranged on the calendar, as other parents who lose a child will confirm. The first Mothers and Fathers day without Daniel — check. Heading back to work and trying to be “normal” the best you can — conquered. Enduring the mental anguish of his first birthday without him — done. We dutifully ascended the twin peaks of Thanksgiving and Christmas with a missing seat at the table.
This April we climbed over the jagged first anniversaries of both his suicide and actual death. May brought the final mountain, which was actually an amazing time of joy and remembrance. After months of planning, we were finally able in our vaccinated world to get over 30 of Daniel’s friends together at the park behind our house to eat Chipotle (his favorite food) and share a few hours of memories, laughs, and tears. The oxygen of human contact came rushing back. For a precious few hours, I was able to smile and laugh about Daniel without being immediately drawn into a grief cascade. The park is a special place to many of his friends who spent so much time with him there, but also where he carried through on his tragic decision. The up and the down of the last mountain.
I now believe there was a mental advantage to focusing on these obstacles and overcoming them. Yet the remaining trail is basically flat and extends for the rest of my life, to when I will join my son in the next. And as I gaze down the road ahead of me, I almost feel like I am just now getting started on the real journey.
I had heard a few times in suicide support groups that the second year is harder than the first. I found that hard to believe…. until I entered this second year. I can mentally picture the storms and waves of grief that have surged the past 14 months, that have now ebbed to reveal the true landscape that was always underneath the turbulence.
My uncovered world achingly does not have Daniel, but is otherwise normal. I observe that almost everyone has moved on from my son, which is good but selfishly sad to me.
Yet as I squint into the distance, I hope to see that new and undiscovered good things must lie further down the trail.
One foot in front of the other.
