Easter and Cusp of Spring: Holidays are Impossible Really

He is Risen Indeed

Easter and Cusp of Spring: Holidays are Impossible Really

Here in central Ohio, the day promises to be beautiful. It is only 45 degrees now, but by this afternoon, it will be 71 degrees. Skies will be gray today, but you can feel the cusp of spring. The sun, through slated gray skies, breaks through—beckoning life from a ground, earth, soil, trees, and flowers, laid dormant by winter.

This is my third Easter without Dylan. To those of you moving through this holiday for the first or even second time, know that you are in my heart. Holidays are impossible really.

Dylan Andrew Brown, Forever 20 years old

For so many years, Easter was my favorite holiday. I belong to a faith that promises hope with this day, but I also love that this day promises new life everywhere. I love seeing crocus and daffodils and hyacinths in all their colors poke up from the ground. I love seeing robins poised to grab their meal from a newly thawed ground and I love hearing the chirping of birds. This year, a single whip-or-will echoes her coo outside my bedroom window. And this year, we had a warm winter, so even though it’s still early in Ohio, so much of our grass is already a deep, rich green.

And I am on an intense job search right now—have been since December and am only just beginning to see forward progress. This is the first time since Dylan died (June 25, 2012) that I’ve been able to pull myself together enough to present myself as the professional I am. I am a teacher, but can no longer teach—it’s just too painful, both emotionally and physically, so I am working with a job coach to re-invent myself. As we all so well now know, carrying on, keeping on keeping on, is so much about re-inventing.

College campuses are my home away from home, and I always loved teaching kids coming of age through years where the search for identity is strongest. I teach English, composition mostly—all levels, but also American and British lit, and I’ve always loved teaching. To me, it never even seemed like I was working, merely sharing a passion and encouraging young adults to find their voice.

How sad to think I failed at this with my own son, my only child, the pride and joy and sun and my heart’s song. I hate when I move through my grief passages where guilt surfaces, where hindsight seems 20/20, where could’ve, should’ve, and would’ve conjure themselves as the be-all, end-all of an absolutely fallacious reasoning on my part that I somehow have power enough to control another person’s life. Just because Dylan was my son didn’t make him immune to the darkness of illness, the struggle of rising above a depression that pulled him under, time and time again. In my heart of hearts, I know I didn’t make him take his life and I know that alcohol, drugs, and manic depression did.

Dylan and Emily, Mosaic Program, Senior Year, 2010

So I am at this weird, crazy juxtaposition where I know better than to go there, where logic defies my own suffering and mother lode of guilt, but still, in this infancy of a lifetime of dealing with losing my son to suicide, I do go.

I laid awake in bed last night trying to conjure up beautiful memories and images from Easters past. Egg hunts, coloring Easter eggs, special candies and treats from a local chocolate company, Easter dinners at Grandma’s—ham, sweet potatoes, pickled eggs and beets (which Dylan hated and found disgusting!), asparagus, and jokes tucked into plastic eggs at each of our plates.

Hope--this time of year has always been about hope for me. I have a white cat who distinctly resembles a white bunny, and I try to smile about this, but I am having such a hard time today. I can’t find my smile. I didn’t go to church (I find family things impossible). I am due at Mom’s this afternoon for the same old, same old Easter dinner with the same old, same old china and cloth napkins and jokes in plastic Easter eggs, but nothing (and I want to scream this) nothing is the same!

I am beyond folks acknowledging Dylan now. It has been 3 years, 9 months, and there is a deafening silence. I find this a second kind of death, and perhaps that is part of my heavy grieving this year as well—I just have nowhere to take my grief, no one who will just hold me, hug me, love me and remember Dylan.

And I know that this too shall pass, that this day shall pass, that the heaviness of this load will shift enough that I can sort of, kind of, almost have a day-to-day life. But just for right now, I feel the joke’s on me. I am no longer the solid chocolate Easter rabbit, rich and decadent and sure to bring a smile. Now I am a hollow chocolate rabbit, my center missing, my outsides fragile, my insides missing the very stuff of life.

Me, Easter 2016

I miss my son, I miss my son, I miss my son. . .Dear God, I miss my son. We are here only for a blip in time. This is what I use to console myself, that none of us knows when our end will be. I try to believe the truism that none of us gets a free pass from death. I try to believe that dying is part of living.

But how ironic that the pain that made my son end his life should so become the insidious pain I must now live out for the rest of my days here. Sigh. . .oh well, I’ve learned that distraction helps, and so off to get ready I go. And getting outside into this sunshine and warm weather will help. Spending only a little bit of time at Mom’s will help--the old, go late and leave early, and I don’t really care if anybody understands this or not. Reading or watching Netflix will help. Writing helps. PoS helps. My cat, Lily, helps. If my heart can bear it, playing music will help. Maybe I just need to let my insides outside. I fight letting the tears come, still, I think, in fear that they might never end.

I have come so far, but still my heart knows such sadness. Holidays are hard. Telling our stories help. Those who really get us are those, sadly, most like us--other bereaved parents. We harbor a pain so deep most of the world can’t even fathom such pain.

Love and peace and hugs to all of us today,

Beth, Dylan’s Mom
March 19, 1992-June 25, 2012
Forever my heart, my wings, my love

Ugh. . .I have entered the “death” season. Here comes Mother’s Day and then June, a month I wish I could just eradicate from my calendar year. Already I am grieving. This will be year 4. So much has been made more bearable, but this bearing down on a season where my heart rips open all over again is impossible to bear. I guess just for today I can be grateful June 25th is not here yet, that it is still yet March, that life is one day, one hour, one minute, and sometimes, just one breath at a time. I miss my son--

Beautiful Lily