Category: Death

Breaking Open

On July 18, 2023

My last blog post was last May; it’s been a long time!

In that one, I wrote about seeds, – seeds planted in soil and metaphorical seeds within us. I noted that before a seed becomes any kind of new life, it has to be broken open. I promised a second post to talk about this.

Nature created the process of scarification which “involves weakening, opening, or otherwise altering the coat of a seed to encourage germination.” (Wikipedia) This process of change can be glamorized, but when humans have to soften, weaken, or break open, it’s rarely glamorous at all. Many of us have been taught to automatically resist this kind of surrender. Yet despite our best intentions, we are forced into breaking open.

Despite intending to blog again sooner, last summer became full with gardening, a kitchen renovation and personal health challenges. And then my sister Beth’s heart started to fail.

Beth faced numerous and significant health problems for at least a decade, including two open heart surgeries. Last summer, a medication that had kept major symptoms of congestive heart failure at bay became ineffective.

My sister played piano skillfully – often at church and to accompany other musicians and also just for the love of it. She sang well too, her alto voice strong and sure. She grieved when unable to play piano as she became weaker and Fuchs dystrophy worsened her vision.

Beth was thorough and detail-oriented; an excellent proofreader. She used those skills in various jobs throughout adulthood. She found numerous errors on my website!

She loved her family, her children, and her grandchildren. Those relationships weren’t always easy, but they were a priority and she relished time spent with family.

Beth died last mid-September. My husband and I flew to Kansas, where she lived all her adult life, to attend her services.

While there, I realized – visiting her home, talking with her friends, walking her neighborhood, and also through a nearby arboretum she loved – that I didn’t know Beth well. We’d lived far apart since she moved there for college. We loved each other and stayed in touch with texts, emails, and occasional phone calls but weren’t close friends like some sisters are. I wish I had worked harder to stay better connected.

Now in mid-2023, I continue to grieve and mourn her death, untimely at age 65, along with the deaths of my dad, a dear friend, and several neighbors in the past three years. I realize that I, like a seed, have been broken open.

I discovered that a big part of me does not want to write about this kind of being broken open. It’s messy, painful, and uncertain. It takes so much energy.

Yet in some ways I am more alive than ever. When you view a dead person, you know that they are not here anymore. You know, from the heartbeat and blood coursing through your veins and your quickened breath, that you are. And this provides an opportunity for living better and more intentionally.

Certain old goals or propensities of mine, now more than ever, simply don’t matter. They just don’t. I have been torn from some of my perfectionism and need to control life. I don’t have to get everything done in a particular way; it does not matter.

And certain things really do matter. I’m more aware of my deep love for my spouse and children, for my other sister, mom, family members, friends, and yes, my clients. I am a little better at being grateful. I know more clearly I want to spend my time doing what juices me, with those who love me, and in places that are important to me. These clarified values help me focus my life, my goals, and daily actions.

I’m also learning that grief is a process; it takes time, it’s bumpy, and when we experience loss of any kind, but particularly the death of people we love, we never return to who we were before they left us. We are altered.

I am not an expert on grief, but with my sister’s death, I received another initiation into it. It broke me open in unfamiliar ways. Like the seed’s shell must soften and surrender to the soil before the next step of growth, I want to be open to continued growing and learning from this dark and hopefully fertile space.

Brenda Hartman-Souder, LCSW July 2023

Losing Dad

By brendahs

On December 17, 2020

In Death, Grief

We buried dad on mom’s 89th birthday this October. That day worked best with family travel schedules, and mom was okay with it. Eight immediate family members gathered for a graveside service. We did not hug or get too close, the reality of Covid-19 altering life rituals and gatherings.

Dad lived in a nursing home for almost six years due to increasing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and other conditions. His health declined although his mind stayed sharp. He watched hours of CNN news, and before Covid-19 hit, he regularly played Bingo and attended other activities, tooling around in his electric wheelchair.

So when the call came from my sister, I wasn’t surprised that my 91-year old father had died (peacefully and in his sleep). What shocked me was the instantaneousness of grief, how visual and audio memories of him in younger, healthier years started parading through my brain.

I’ve known dad 58 years; he’s been a constant in my life. Quiet and mostly in the background, he was smart, steady, loyal and hard-working. My dad, Robert Milton Hartman, was also complex.

He worked hard at a low-paying job – 47 years as a plumber for the same company – and he excelled at it. Customers would call the business asking for him to come out to their farm or home because they knew he’d do the job right.

He was fastidious about certain things, like washing the family Buick EVERY Saturday afternoon until it gleamed, and trimming the edges of the lawn just so. He preferred certain foods, like potato salad, just like his mother made it.

Dad also struggled with depression on and off for much of his adulthood and took a passive stance to his health, deferring to mom to manage doctor appointments and medications. He refused counseling. He was maddening that way.

Church and faith were vital to him and yet he lived with fear that he’d done something to prevent salvation and the Christian’s assurance of eternal life. This tormented him and so we did not talk with him about death or his last wishes.

He did not like to take risks, his life seemed quiet and small, less than his potential. He refused to ask for a pay raise because “if that’s what they are paying me, that’s what I’m worth.”

And yet, in grief I think of daddy as kind, gentle, and easy to be with. His quiet love for his family dominates.

Warm and vital memories surface:

Sitting up with me as I retch over the toilet with some bug, or patting me to sleep at night when darkness scared me.
Leading hymns at church, first blowing the worn, trusty pitch pipe, then leading our congregation in his clear tenor voice.
Arriving home every work night at 6 pm sharp to relish my mom’s home cooking, eating dessert every single night.
Popping corn in the old electric skillet and slicing crisp local apples on Sunday afternoons.
Fixing our family cars with his keen mechanical skill, taking pleasure in driving on road trips.
Recalling, at my wedding, a little incident when as a child I bit him, in fear, on a roller coaster. Everyone was cracking up.
Helping my spouse and me with plumbing projects in the homes we owned. He soldered copper pipes with ease and perfection. And when our garbage disposal backed up just a few days after his death, I commented to my family that “dad would know how to fix this.”
Gently holding my children as babies when he and mom came to visit.

And while the circumference of dad’s world was mostly in our rural Ohio community, he and mom flew to Nigeria in 1998 where we lived at the time. He walked the crowded markets, visited our friends and bravely tried local foods like melon seed soup and pounded yam.

So many memories.

I lived several states and sometimes a continent away in adulthood, and while I visited when I could, it doesn’t seem like nearly enough, nor do the phone calls I made to him in the nursing home. I did my best given my life, work, and family.

After his death, my sister and mom removed his belongings from the nursing home. Seeing his phone hit me hard. He loved having a phone; it was his lifeline to those he loved and it was especially vital during the the last months when the pandemic prevented any visitors. When I’d call, he often answered with “Hello, Brenda!” I can’t erase his number from my phone and I still have his voicemails. Here’s one: “Brenda, it’s Dad, I just wanted to call and tell you I love you, and thank you for calling. You can call me back if you want to but you don’t have to.”

I’ve been listening to Colin Hay’s “Dear Father” a lot. (It’s a marvelous song.) These lines I’ve selected especially get to me, as I grieve daddy, honor his life, and reflect on the ways he lives on in me.

“Dear father, I’ve got your photographs.
Thank God for photographs, hip, hip, hooray.

Dear father, I can’t let you go just yet
and I still can’t forget you walking around.

Dear father, you’re starring in my dreams,
and you’re stealing all the scenes, where did you go?

Dear father, you’re in my reflection now.
As I reach out and touch you now, where did you go?

Dear father, I’ve got your photographs.
Thank God for photographs, hip, hip, hooray”

Brenda Hartman-Souder, December 2020

Demolition Has Its Day, and Place, in Life

By brendahs

On July 6, 2018

In Death, Endings, Facing Difficulty

“Don’t despair if your heart has been through a lot of trauma. Sometimes, that’s how beautiful hearts are remade: they are shattered first.” Yasmin Mogahed

Last fall I saw a house being demolished. The equipment necessary to bring it down was parked on the road and slowed my journey up Oak Street to my office, so every day I’d glance quickly to see more of the house being knocked to pieces.

I don’t remember what it looked like – it was probably a modest two-story like other simple colonials that line the street. And I don’t know anything about the lives of the families that lived there, the story of that particular house or why it was razed. It might be a sad or tragic story to tell. I love the old homes in our city and am always disappointed when one has to go.

But I was also curious to see what happens next.

Our family owns an empty lot where a two-family home stood. Information about what happened is sparse but one short article I found on microfiche reported the house was destroyed in a fire in the 1970’s. No one was injured and there was speculation about insurance fraud, but by the time we bought our home, it was an empty expanse of crabgrass, languishing perennials (but some very fine peonies), a concrete driveway slab at the curb, and bits of the garage foundation at the back. It was pretty ugly.

That empty lot played a big factor in our decision to buy this house. We had it graded, fenced and finished out with topsoil and grass seed. Then we dug a garden and developed, over the next 17 years, perennial and vegetable beds that have provided beauty and sustenance. Our children played in the yard when they were little, it’s a great space for hosting potlucks and also gives us extra space on a street where homes were sometimes constructed too close together to let the sun in.

My point? Destruction can lead to something good both in property and in personal experience. Emptiness can be a fertile space for something new to grow.

In therapy, persons often come knowing that something isn’t working, that reactive or addictive patterns in themselves or relationships are causing stalemate and damage. Or that a relationship or job or stage of life or dream is ending.

Something is being demolished….and this is part of life – it’s predictable. And waiting alongside sorrow, shock, resistance, and anger is also the possibility of what might be born after an ending. But the ending has to come first.

People can move from what’s empty, unusable or just plain over to welcome something new, hopeful, meaningful, useful. It’s not easy, it’s not pretty or elegant – all that demolition and mess and hauling away of what was; but it’s doable, necessary and important all the same.

Therapy should be a safe place for clients:

to be listened to and understood,
to know, as a foundation under their feet, their strengths, values, connections, and resilience – what’s going to help them make it through
and then to understand what has to change in order for growth to occur; what needs to be deconstructed or demolished or finished so that something healthier and more workable can emerge.

It’s possible to both grieve painful endings AND hold onto the belief that something lovely, strong or meaningful might be built in the space left by ending old habits, surrendering a dream, facing sorrow, or releasing faulty beliefs.

In just the last week, I noticed that the empty lot I drive by has been leveled, topsoil and straw spread. I’m waiting to see shoots of grass poke up through.

You will know a respectful home once stood there, that it’s not there anymore and you will also appreciate the little rectangle of green possibility.

Brenda Hartman-Souder, June 2018

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Some good reading on endings, grief transitions, etc.:

Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes by William Bridges

Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear and Despair by Miriam Greenspan

Kelly Brogan, MD’s website: https://kellybroganmd.com/ I don’t necessarily agree with all of Dr. Brogan’s expressed views and beliefs, but her writing on facing pain, the transformation possible when leaning into one’s suffering instead of running from it, are powerful.

Grief Recovery Handbook by Russell Friedman & John W. James

The Wild Edge of Sorrow, by Frances Weller

Wearing Woodchucks

By brendahs

On June 8, 2018

In Death, Facing Difficulty, Grief

The new diamond I’m wearing is a woodchuck.

Wait, let me explain!

Last weekend we planted beans, cucumbers, zucchini, tomato seedlings, and small starts of kale, zinnias, and nasturtium I’d started in pots from seed.

It took a woodchuck one day to discover the place under the fence he/she could easily dig. The kale was devoured and this woodchuck had a fetish for something under the tomato plants, digging vigorous holes.

I was bummed. First, we’d built an 8-foot high fence to keep out urban deer. Then I learned to protect snow peas with mesh to prevent birds from plucking them to pieces. There’s not much to do about the energetic squirrels. And now I’ve got to figure out how to outsmart woodchucks.

Part of me feels sorry for myself when snags happen. I think about quitting, not sure all this gardening effort is worth it. And yet, and yet, we’re already eating sweet new lettuce and the promise of tender beans and plump tomatoes, grown here instead of a farmer’s field, compels me to stay with gardening, woodchucks and all.

Life is like this – we chug along, living our lives. Then it rains too hard, or not enough, or a woodchuck lays waste to the tomatoes and we have to decide – is this worth it? And every time, if want to keep moving along life’s path and live a wholehearted life, we have to say yes.

My spouse reminds me when I’m complaining vigorously, that challenges are diamonds. He gets this from Charlotte Joko Beck who wrote “Nothing Special, Living Zen.”

“The path of life seems to be mostly difficulties, things that give trouble. Yet the longer we practice, the more we begin to understand that those sharp rocks on the road are in fact like precious jewels; they help us to prepare the proper conditions for our lives. […] There are sharp rocks everywhere. What changes from years of practice is coming to know something you didn’t know before: that there are no sharp rocks – the road is covered with diamonds.

[…] Increasingly, problems do not rule out practice, but support it. Instead of finding that practice is too difficult, that we have too many problems, we see that the problems themselves are the jewels, and we devote ourselves to being with them in a way we never dreamt of before. […] It’s not that problems disappear or that life “improves”, but that life slowly transforms – and the sharp rocks that we hated become welcome jewels. We may not delight to see them when they appear, but we appreciate the opportunity that they give, and so we embrace them rather than running away from them. This is the end of complaints about our life. Even that difficult person, the one who criticizes you, the one who doesn’t respect your opinion, or whatever – everybody has somebody or something, some sharp rock. Such a rock is precious; it is an opportunity, a jewel to embrace.” *

While Joko Beck is writing of a meditation practice, her words can be enlarged for anyone serious about following a path of growth.

I know a woodchuck ruining the garden is a trivial example of a dilemma life deals us. Illness, injury, a colleague that drives us crazy, loss, divorce, death or a painful family drama that keeps repeating are true life challenges. Unexpected, painful things are happening, have happened, will happen to every human.

Our knee-jerk reaction is to push those things away, run from them, distract ourselves from them, criticize ourselves (or others) for the way they affect us, etc.

And still, if we are to grow, our work involves turning and meeting life – whatever it brings – being with it and allowing it to teach us strength, courage, resilience, a sense of humor, and increased appreciation for the journey itself, strewn with all those lovely woodchucks….I mean diamonds!

So, out goes the trap, hoping I can outsmart wily woodchuck. And keeping a vigilant watch over the growing garden. And hoping still for tender beans and crisp cucumbers.

Brenda Hartman-Souder, June 2018

* Joko, Beck Charlotte. Nothing Special: Living Zen. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993