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Love Never Dies By Sandy Goodman
- Sandy, 2001 PREFACE damn… awake again… cat must be gone… sirens… it's hot… i wish Jason would never have fed that damn cat… it's been yowling at our window for hours… running away before I can even get close enough to see it… jason needs to get home… he'll be exhausted… they leave in twelve hours… exactly twelve hours… he was so calm today, considering how nervous he must be feeling. . . weird . . . i can't believe they're going to be in the Navy . . . was that the phone . . . now what? another wrong number? some kid calling for one of the twins? so what if it's 2:30 in the morning . . . "hello". . . "sandy, this is riverton pd . . . there's been some kind of electrical accident and jason was injured . . .you need to meet the ambulance at the hospital" . . . "okay, thank you" . . . man, i wish he would learn how to time these scrapes and bumps so that they happen during office hours . . . now we'll have another emergency room bill . . . "dave, get up. jason's been hurt or something, it's probably nothing, but we need to go to the hospital" . . . fumbling in the dark, i find my clothes i had thrown on the floor and start dressing . . . dave asks what time it is and i tell him it's 2:45 . . . he throws his watch on the dresser and mumbles something about it being broke . . . "it says it's five something instead of two" . . . i go in and tell josh where we're going . . . he goes back to sleep . . . okay . . . he would have said something if jason were hurt bad . . . they're twins . . . he'd know . . . we arrive at one entrance to the hospital just as the ambulance pulls into the other . . . i can't walk toward the ambulance . . . my legs refuse . . . i go toward the main door . . . the one i have used countless other times for stitches and BB removals . . . dave stops at the back of the ambulance . . . as they wheel jason into the hospital they tell his dad how many volts of electricity have shot through our son . . . crying now, dave walks over to where i stand frozen . . . i force the words out . . . "what's wrong? what did they say? what happened?" . . . he tells me about the voltage . . . says it is impossible to survive something that strong… i don't believe him… i can hear jason talking in there… he sounds fine… he sounds like he does when he has a migraine…he must have bumped his head… "are they sure he even touched it? Maybe something else touched the wire… maybe he just hit his head… listen to him… there's no way he could have been shocked and sound like that… he's wide awake"… we go into the hallway outside of the room they have Jason in…i hear him calling "mommy! Daddy, daddy, daddy!" just like when his migraines are at their worst… now i know he is okay… he is too coherent, he even got the date and president right, i heard him… a doctor comes out… i ask "how is he?… "if it were any worse, he would be dead. i have never seen an electrical shock this bad except a lady who was hit smack in the middle of the forehead by lightning"… there is no air in this hallway…"can we see him?"…"no…not now…later."… oh god please let him be okay, don't let him die… let them be wrong… i can't take this… please help us… help jason be okay… dave is pacing the small waiting room reserved for emotionally distraught family members… we go outside to smoke… i reassure him…"it's gonna be okay… he probably has a migraine from the fall… they don't know what they're talking about… he'd be in a coma if he'd really been shocked with that much electricity… they're just guessing… "please God… please let him be okay… let this be just a horrible mistake… please don't let him die… dave won't look at me… he knows what I refuse to see… jason's friend who they have told us was with him comes into the hallway, an EMT holding her up… she is crying… we ask her what happened…"we climbed the building and on the way down jason just reached out and grabbed the wire that was by the fire escape and then he fell and hit the steps and he landed in the alley and he sat up and grabbed his arm and said 'whoa, what was that?' and then the police came and no we weren't drinking or anything" and she continues to cry… we go outside again… jason is now quiet… they come and tell us to go pack a bag and be ready to leave for salt lake city where jason will be transported as soon as life flight gets here… we ask again to see him… they say yes… for a minute… we go in… josh is with us now but i am not sure how he got here… we go into the room jason is totally out… he has been given something to paralyze him… dave reaches up to smooth his hair back and the nurse squeezing the bag that sends air to my son's lungs says "Don't touch him"… dave jerks his hand back as if he's been burnt and i ask "why?" and she mumbles something about not wanting him to move.. as if he could.. josh can't look at him… god, he looks dead, we go home and pack… we are back in fifteen minutes… maybe twenty… Stacey and ken are here with us now… we sit in the waiting room and watch the clock.. it's almost five thirty… the sun is coming up… oh God please let him live… don't let him die… he is our baby…i'm freezing in here… a doctor we know comes in and tells us he is strong and is doing good considering… he explains he is there to do surgery on his arm… to open it up because of the pressure building inside where the electricity burnt him and he talks about how electricity travels through muscle and that of course the heart is a muscle but so far jason's heart is doing great… i start to breathe again and then he leaves and they are bringing jason back from doing a cat scan because he hit his head… someone yells and then they come and close the door and tell us not to leave for salt lake yet and i am paralyzed… my heart is pounding so loud i can't hear anything else… maybe if i don't hear it, it won't happen…please God… please do what is best for jason… whatever it is he needs… it is his needs… not ours…that matter… oh god oh god oh god… maybe if i block the door shut… yes, i'll find something to… it opens… it's the doctor… he's shaking his head…i close my eyes tight and concentrate… i won't listen… i won't let him say it…"i'm sorry"… i look up…heart pounding in my ears… i see his lips say, "his heart stopped… we can't get him back… we tried"…and the air is sucked out of the room… Preliminaries
AS I SIT TO BEGIN THIS BOOK, IT IS FOUR YEARS LATER, both a lifetime ago and only last week. Joshua, Jason's twin brother, is now 22, and Jeremy, our oldest son, is 26. Dave and I are entering our 28th year of marriage in rural Wyoming where we have lived since 1986. As we approach the anniversary of Jason's death, it seems destined that we share this story. Jason's death catapulted me into a search for truth that has expanded my view of reality tenfold. It is important that you realize that this journey is mine. The experiences, obstacles, and conclusions are mine. Each of us progresses differently, and each event appears at the right place for that progression. Perhaps your choosing this book is one of those events. Perhaps it's not. I certainly do not know all the answers, and I believe that my truth is just that, mine. I will write about grief, as I experienced it. If you lose or have lost a loved one, you may very well experience an entirely different process. However, my guess is that you will feel as if we have walked in the same shoes at least part of the way. I also want to spend some time talking about a few misconceptions about grief that are long overdue for extinction in our society. When I share information about grief and all that goes with it, I apologize in advance for concentrating primarily on the death of a child. No matter how much revising I do, it continues to surface as the focal point. I will write about my search for answers. Jason's death left a gaping hole in my life. I needed to fill that space with understanding. The fear that death might actually have the power it has been credited with held me hostage. I needed to know that Jason still lived, that the relationship we had shared was intact, and that love does not die. And lastly, I will write about what I discovered along the path. I will recount the events that inspired me to begin this book-events that I hope will illuminate your soul and send you off on your own voyage of knowing. I want to clarify that Jason's expertise in communicating from the other side has nothing to do with his level of spirituality before he passed. Jason was a very typical 18-year-old boy. He belched and passed gas, and the word spiritual was not in his vocabulary. He once left a church service prematurely because he thought the pastor was speaking in tongues . . . it was Spanish. Neither is our persistent contact the result of an extraordinary bond of love between us. My heart is bursting with love for all three of my children. But on a scale of one to ten, Jason and I were smack in the middle at five, as average as any mother and son could be. Jason began communicating with me because I was relentless. I begged, I pleaded, I bribed, and I did not stop. Before Jason died, if I wanted him or his brothers to clean their room or mow the lawn, I begged, I pleaded, and occasionally, I bribed. I even paid them a quarter an hour to behave on car trips. It worked. I continued with the same tactics after Jason passed. Throughout the book, you will find bold, italicized segments that are my interpretations of Jason's thoughts on the subject. This is not channeled material or automatic writing. At least I don't anticipate it to be. It is simply a mom who knows her son well enough to feel comfortable putting words in his mouth. If he doesn't agree with what I think he'd write, he'll have to change it. This is a book about life. It is about the passage from heartbreak to joy. It's about going beyond the obvious and seeing differently. It is my story and it is everyone's. If you take only one thing from it and claim it as your own, let it be this: Death is not an ending. Life is eternal. Love is immortal. There is no greater peace than finding that what you have feared the most does not exist, and there is no greater joy than knowing that love never leaves. That's it in a nutshell. Eliminating fear, finding love. Chapter 2 Silent Cries
We have not done well with dying. We have denied its reality and considered it an end to life that should be avoided at all costs. We tell our children that Grandma died and went to a beautiful place called Heaven, and then we quit saying her name. We cart her clothes off to the Salvation Army, sell her house, cry (but only in secret) when someone inadvertently mentions her, and put all the pictures into storage. Instead of seeing death as the next stage of life and exploring the possibilities of such a belief, we choose to let fear keep us ignorant. There are numerous presumptions about death and loss floating around in our society that need to be grounded. These fallacies about grief, adages meant to comfort, and suppositions passed down from one generation to the next, often do more harm than good. Those of us who have met death in person have a responsibility to introduce her to others and to share the reality of the emotional roller coaster she places us on. Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has been credited with defining the five stages of grief as: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. We've heard it from experts (who should know better) and from our well-meaning supporters. Unfortunately, what we've heard is wrong. The doctor explained the concept in her landmark book, On Death and Dying, as the five steps an individual might move through upon learning of their terminal illness. She offered the stages when she wrote: "In the following pages is an attempt to summarize what we have learned from our dying patients in terms of coping mechanisms at the time of a terminal illness." During the 31 years since Dr. Kübler-Ross penned her now classic text, readers have somehow misconstrued the material and identified it as "The Five Stages of Grief." This was a grave (no pun) error on our part, but a superb illustration of our need to place death and dying in a neat little box that can be put away on a shelf and forgotten. Reexamining my own experiences of grief, I can distinguish four areas I moved through to get from where I was to where I am. From the minute I comprehended the doctor's words and knew that my son was dead, until almost exactly six months later, I was numb. If you can imagine being emotionally anesthetized, that is the feeling . . . or lack of feeling. From that point until nearly two years later, I lived in a state of unyielding pain. The only thing that alleviated the pain was my hope that I could find proof of Jason's continued existence. I began searching for answers and used that search as a coping mechanism. As that search yielded results, and I changed my perception of both dying and living, I was able to start reinvesting in life and stop looking for shortcuts and hiding places. Therefore, if I were asked to list the phases I went through since Jason died, I would have to say:
I am not implying that everyone could, should, or would take these same steps. There are many paths to choose from and a million forks in each path. No two people hurt exactly the same, for the same reasons, or for the same length of time. The pain of grief is as individual as a snowflake, and created minute by minute depending on where the griever is focused. The idea that there are specific steps to go through, in a defined sequence and for a definitive period of time, creates undue expectations not only for the griever, but also for their loved ones who anxiously await their "recovery." . . . which brings up another fallacy. How many times have you or someone you've known asked, "Shouldn't they be back to normal by now?" Folks, we do not recover from the death of a loved one. Grief is not a disease. We do not "get well" from it. We begin at one point in our life, we go through what we need to go through, and we end at a different point in our life. We do not go back to where we started. Grief is a normal process that we go through when someone we love dies. We need to stop trying to make it abnormal and realize that each of us is going to confront it sooner or later. My award for the most irrational platitude goes to whoever said, "Time heals all wounds." If I had my leg amputated tomorrow and I just sat and waited, would I stop wanting it a few months down the road? If you woke up tomorrow morning and found you were blind and you decided to go wait it out in the Caribbean, would you be feeling "back to your old self" in a year or two? Taking it further, would your co-workers expect you to be "over it" before the holiday celebrations began? Time heals nothing. Let me amend that. Time by itself heals nothing. Time is a bandage, designed to protect. It does not heal. Grief work begins on the inside and takes an enormous amount of energy and self-exploration. Even with tremendous support, the wound from a profound loss will remain as a scar that forever changes the bearer. At a recent seminar in our community, a handout estimated that it takes approximately three to seven years after a loss (depending on the specific circumstances) for a bereaved person to reinvest in life. That is not three to seven years of hiding the hurt, stuffing the anger, and ignoring the guilt. That is three to seven years of confronting the numerous emotions that flood the senses before finally being able to embrace the loss and move through it. When a loss is significant, we do not return to "our old selves." However, we should (and I despise "shoulds") find a way to be comfortable with our new self. I can remember a neighbor of ours coming to our house on the day that Jason died. He informed us that we would survive, and that he had survived the loss of two sons. He told us we would feel like we had basketballs lodged in our chests, and that although the basketballs would shrink in size over time, they would always be there. We have learned to feel comfortable with those basketballs right where they are. Said in total honesty, and meant to prepare us for what was ahead, those simple words stay firmly in my memory. Others will expect the "old you" back. They will avoid mentioning your loss, they will suggest that you need to "get out and do something," and they will tell you it is time to get on with your life. It is the only way they know how to react. Many bereaved parents have told me that they've learned who their true friends are since losing their child. We become angry and distance ourselves from one friend after another. We alienate ourselves from family members and say, "They don't care about me." And we quit. We quit family, we quit friends, we quit our jobs, and some of us quit life. It takes effort to share our pain with others. It takes effort to explain what we are feeling, when we are feeling it, and why we need others' support. It is much easier to simply end the relationship when it stops working and blame it all on their insensitivity. I say that's a cop-out. We need to be responsible. We cannot expect others to know our feelings if we guard them like treasures. Unfortunately, at the time I needed to share what I was feeling, I myself was critically lacking in knowledge of the entire grief process. Many have asked me how they can help. What should they say? What is taboo? First of all, it is critical that you realize there is nothing, absolutely no thing that you or anyone can say to a parent who has lost a child that will make the pain go away. The pain is necessary. What others can do is show support by listening, listening again, and listening some more. There are also things to know, to say, to not say, and to do that will give a bereaved parent a sense of being understood. The following are common issues that are "normal" in the grieving process:
When you greet a parent whose child has died, instead of the usual "How are you?" (that we all know means "I don't really want to know but what else should I say?"), change it to "How are you really doing since _____ died?" We bereaved parents have an extreme desire to know that you remember that our child is dead. We want others to comprehend the magnitude of such a traumatic event. We want to hear our child's name over and over and over again. We want our bizarre behavior, our mood swings, and our forgetfulness to be pardoned. We think we're allowed, for as long as it takes. We want to be able to talk about our child. We want to share memories of the time before their death and of the death itself, without someone changing the subject. Share stories with us about our children; tell us what you remember. And please share the happy memories. We want to be able to laugh without feeling guilty. Laughter, like tears, is wonderful healing energy. We want acknowledgments on our child's birthday and death date, and we want to receive them forever. Don't mistakenly assume that the age of the child determines the impact of the loss. A child lost at zero days old is just as valuable to that mom and dad as a child who is sixty. Pain is pain. Losing a child is not contagious. Don't avoid us. Don't be afraid to touch us; it can often be more comforting than words. Don't ask us when we're going to be "over it" or how long you have to wait. We will never be who we were before. We have started over. Don't try to find some reason for our child's death. There is no reason good enough. Don't ask us how we feel if you don't want to hear, and please don't tell us you know how we feel. Unless we've told you, you don't know. Losing a child has transformed me. I am not the same person I was four years ago. Before Jason's death, I had no idea who I was or why I was here. I had difficulty surviving a stressful day, let alone enduring the unthinkable. I existed, but I did not live. I had very little compassion and judged everyone and every situation as either good or bad. All of this has changed and will continue to change as I walk, and sometimes crawl, along this path I've chosen. Do not misunderstand. I am certainly not grateful for my son's dying. I would give anything to turn back time and keep Jason home that night. But . . . my gratitude is immense for the well-marked trail I was led to and the light that has always appeared when blackness fell down around me. Ya know, it's why we take a body . . . so that we can feel. If we'd all remember why we're there and especially remember we are just there for the blink of an eye, we'd hurt a lot less. But if everyone hurt a lot less, no one would need anyone else and the whole thing would be pointless. Go figure. As far as Mom keeping me home that night, I was on my way out long before that day. I didn't really know it at the time, but looking back I can remember how easy it was for me to sign up for the Navy and how relaxed I felt. Mom remembers. I just signed up. Signed up for something I had no desire to do, didn't look back, was relaxed all the way through and even on the day before leaving. That wasn't me. If I had really felt like I was leaving the next day for months of push-ups, running, and "yes sir-ing," I would have been a total jerk to everyone. Instead, I was totally cool. When I walked away from my house and up the street that night, I felt like I was at the end of a long vacation. I'd had a great time, learned a lot of new things, and made some incredible friends. But I was tired and ready to go home. So forget about your would haves, could haves, and should haves. When we're done doing what we go there to do, we're done. It's over whether the fat lady has sung or not. Oh, one more thing. The light that Mom mentioned always appearing when she needed it? It was her own. We create what we need. Always. Remember that.
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Feb. 9, 2002 It is nearly a year since I packed up the "Love Never Dies" manuscript and sent it off into publishing land. Tomorrow I leave for my first book signing after a two day media training session in LA. The entire process has been magical, and is still too big for me to see. How did this happen? How did having a son die become a positive event? Well....it didn't. It isn't his dying that has changed me. It is what he has become. Death is so difficult for us. We cannot see the forest for the trees. We look at what we consider an emptiness, an absence in our life. We mourn that absence and curse the events that created it. And that's okay, grieving over change is normal and healthy. By all means, feel the emotion. But then we stop. We don't look any further. We don't look for what's beyond the void and settle for seeing only what we expect to see. I am excited about the release of "Love Never Dies." I have seen what happens when a light flickers in a darkened existence. I understand what "believe and you will experience" means and I've seen it occur a hundred times over. There is a gift in every moment when our hearts are open to receive. Please stop by and visit my website at http://www.loveneverdies.net/ You can subscribe to my newsletter, read about Jason's life before and after death, and learn more about my book. If you have a story to share, please feel free to email me from my site. Blessings, and may you never doubt the immortality of love. |
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| The underlying philosophy of Planetlightworker.com is to provide a space for many different flavors of the truth. The views and opinions expressed by the authors of our articles and/or interview subjects are not necessarily those of the editors, management and staff of New Earth Publications. New Earth Publications does not endorse any individual product or concept, but rather, offers this information for your individual discernment. We are happy to receive your opinions and feedback and actively encourage you to send us your views for publication in future issues. Copyright: New Earth Publications, 1999-2007. This © also includes all art, photography and animations (unless otherwise stated). Please contact us if you wish to use PLW imagery. |
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Love
Never Dies
A
SPECIAL NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR