Tag: #synchronicity

At Home with Grief: Learning to Laugh through My Tears

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I am a synchronicity junkie. And today’s is powerful.

I’ve been editing this post on the potency of everyday grief—how it lurks and hides in the nooks and crannies of our ordinary lives—in our homes and hearths.

And this morning, the Facebook algorithm gods sent me a wink. The estate sale for my family home of almost 50 years happened on this day ten years ago after the deaths of my parents. Perhaps, it’s a reminder that home stays with us, always and no matter what.

So, where does grief live?

I think it’s in me and with me all the time—not in the old books, porcelain teacups, and big plastic bottles of glitter my mom collected. Grief is a part of my connective tissue and a part of all humans who love fiercely. I will never stop missing my late son Elliot. Sadness and melancholy are steely threads that entangle every fiber of my being—permanent strands of sorrow. About my other significant losses, well, I feel sad, of course, but Elliot is different. I gave him life. And as Rev. Dr. Fran Shelton said to me last night, he gave me life. His death is still unfathomable—almost five years later. 

When I ask grief where it lives, it quips: “Well, Elaine, wherever the f$#& I please, including every cell in your aging body.” Grief is a snide little cuss. However, if I sit with it a bit and get curious, I understand. In fact, grief’s sass makes me giggle, as it reminds me of a particularly excruciating moment from my youth. I attended St. Michael and All Angels Church Day School through sixth grade. We went to chapel every morning with white-lace doilies Bobby pinned to our tousled locks, because women, even young girls, were not allowed to enter a sacred sanctuary with bare heads back then. At least, that has changed. The boys never wore doilies.

One first-grade morning, we had just completed a bonus verse of God is Working His Purpose Out, one of my fave hymns, and Father Comegys, an affable guy with big black-framed glasses, had begun leading us in a sweet prayer ritual that involved gesturing to different parts of our bodies. “Jesus is in my head; Jesus is in my heart. . .Jesus is in my right arm, my left arm, and so on” . . . Then suddenly, I felt compelled to shriek with great concern:

“Oh no, I’m getting food all over Jesus.”

There were snickers, pointing fingers, hisses, and shushing—followed by a swift grab of my wrist and brisk trot down the hall to the head priest’s office, the first of several. Humiliation is its own fresh kind of hell in church, but it pales in the hierarchy of grief. Just gotta say.

Anyway, the pain of losing my brilliant and complicated 26-year-old son Elliot Everett Wright far exceeds all the other losses and humiliations in my life combined, but I have discovered it also acts as a kind of emotional accelerant like the flammable residue CSI might detect in the ashes after a horrific fire.

It has the power to incinerate.

Profound grief is like that—a virulent, unstable chemical compound that can ignite even innocuous psychological debris in a heartbeat. The spontaneous combustion of new griefs inflaming ancient wounds makes carrying the most unbearable of all losses even more precarious. And vice versa. I contend the fire metaphor is even more visceral than the wave concept.

And while we are talking about incendiary substances, I am reminded of the pungent odor of turpentine spirits that would hang in the air and seep into every surface of our house growing up. My mother, Ann Cushing Gantz, an exquisitely prolific artist who was ferociously frustrated by the fickle art world, liked to repurpose those dark brown B&M baked bean jars, the ones with the subtle honeycomb design embossed in the glass, to soak her paint-caked brushes.

The small, amber containers covered every table, every shelf, and ledge in her cluttered studio over the garage—messy and mesmerizing, like an overgrown garden of potted pigment. I can’t catch a whiff of that harsh bittersweet aroma without thinking of my mother—stringent at times, but uniquely unforgettable. Anything can trigger a grief flame, even years later. And every loss is its own.

Yes, my grief often rants and shouts at me—but sometimes, it’s just a persistent, quiet whisper underneath everything that happens. It’s an inside job to deal with—getting grounded in the now and establishing healthy techniques to soothe my frayed nervous system. I am no longer that frightened little girl who grew up in an atmosphere of confusion and secrets, so I need to stop trying so hard to fix things that aren’t mine to fix. That is where I need to live.

Now, I’m feeling like Masha from Chekhov’s The Three Sisters:

In Act One, Masha says, “I’ve got the blues today, I’m feeling glum, so don’t you mind what I say [laughing through her tears]. We’ll talk some other time . . .”

She might be on to something. Laughing through her tears. Acknowledging the despair but finding a way to laugh. The authorities at The Atlantic concur. Expressing seemingly incongruent emotions can actually help moderate intense feelings—tears of joy, smiles of sadness, etc.

In the end, everything is bittersweet.

Well, Masha, I’m going with that . . . laughing through my tears, and we’ll talk some other time. And check out Fran Shelton’s book for this week’s featured spiritual practice that will help you navigate the most stubborn of your bittersweet memories—whether in your heart or your home.

Find solace in The Spirituality of Grief.

The Circles of Life

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St. Michael and All Angels Columbarium Garden

Lately, I have been thinking about the events of 2018, the year my precious son Elliot died on August 5th. Though I had faced many mighty challenges in my half-century on the earth, this series of 365 days was like no other. It was a messy mélange of life, death, disruption, and grief—but looking back on it now, I’m increasingly befuddled by some of the other events that occurred in that most devastating year. I have mentioned a couple in prior posts that pondered probable connections to the cosmic unconsciousness, like “Quantum Ghosts”.

Could it be true that everything really is happening at the same time—like some quantum ball of tangled twine in another dimension of the time and space continuum? Is the concept of time (past, present, and future) really just a convenient construct? It’s overwhelming to think about too much but still intrigues me in a “Twilight Zone”/”Black Mirror” sort of way. As a side note, Elliot loved both those shows and even introduced me to “Black Mirror.” So why rule it out?

I wrote the post below on May 28, 2018—just two months before Elliot’s sudden, horrific, and unbearable motorcycle death. Like so much in my life now, rereading this essay was both profoundly disturbing and oddly comforting. There is so much we simply don’t understand—and likely never will in this tangible realm.  

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“And Know the Place for the First Time” l May 28, 2018

Memories of those we have lost are often complicated—a morphing mosaic of longing, loneliness, anger, pain, guilt, sadness, gratitude, forgiveness, love and eventually, peace.

This Memorial Day I have come full circle in many ways. When my oldest son, Elliot, watched the “The Lion King” as a toddler, he called it “the circle guh-life.” Turns out that “guh” is profound because the circle is rarely a smooth curve. There are bumps and turns—which reminds me of the words of another Elliot – T.S., with one L:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

I arrived there this week.

I began a new assignment writing copy but in a new context. I hope to shift out of the chaotic freelance writing world to work with an integrated marcom agency in Dallas for a while. Every change is an adjustment, every new adventure a realignment. Every experience, your teacher. I missed the energy of a creative cadre—a tribe of brilliant minds collaborating and concepting in real time. A place to belong. I guess I enjoy the process as much as the product.

The Universe works in mysterious ways—most of them unconscious. Life coach Mary Morrissey teaches, “First, notice what you are noticing. It’s the first step to self-awareness.” So, here’s what I have noticed – though I am starting over once again, I find myself in stunningly familiar territory. I am working in Preston Center, a shopping center just a few miles from where I grew up. It is like returning to the place “where I started”—probably holding more hidden nostalgia than any other place of my childhood.

And I’m seeing it for the first time.

I have been flooded with memories of shopping at Sanger Harris and the Woolworths dime store with my mom and sister when I was just 10 or 11. This was our primary recreational activity—a pocket of together time. An artist, reluctant teacher, and sometime socialite, my mother’s presence filled every room she entered in the outside world. On Saturdays, she adored shopping and visiting her flamboyant fashionista friend Mercedes, who ran the Elizabeth Arden counter at Sanger’s with great panache. They would chat and banter as Melissa and I “played” in the makeup, but her mission was to purchase her signature lipstick shade, Fuchsia Shock. It suited my mom’s mega-watt style, and it was the same shade she sported on her thick, one-inch nails.

Over the past few days, I have wandered the sidewalks of Sherry Lane and Westchester during my lunch breaks. A hip, trendy free-range hamburger boutique has replaced the greasy soda fountain at the Woolworth’s. And Wyatt’s cafeteria, with its wickedly sumptuous chocolate-icebox pie, is long gone—as it the dusty, cramped little store where I purchased my very first record. It was the debut album by The Partridge Family. Though I have lived in Dallas for most of my life, I have never experienced the emotional impact of this place before—not like this. Until now, these glimpses of my past have felt like they belonged to someone—and disconnected.

Perhaps, this is the beginning of my exploring.

On Wednesday, I left my 18th-floor office at noon, pausing for a startlingly raw moment. I noticed the high-rise across the street and recalled that faithful day more than three decades ago when I hopped into the back of shiny, white limo after my wedding reception on the top floor. I struggled to step into the skin of that ostensibly happy married girl. She felt like a character in a movie—unrelated and detached. I saw her in a crisp, purple size-10 linen suit she could wear only after losing 30 pounds on Weight Watchers. She was waving to the smiling people on sidewalk who were tossing fuchsia tissue-paper petals into the air.

I chose not to linger there.

Yet I could not avoid more of the strangely familiar. Not sure why, but I turned right at the corner—away from the shopping center and toward St. Michael’s and All Angels Church. This destination held its own mixed, messy bag of memories, but it lured me with a gravitas I could not explain. The last time I was there was 2014 for my father’s funeral and before that, 2012, for my mother’s memorial following her protracted illness. I also was married there in the sanctuary and attended elementary school at St. Michael’s School, where I always dreaded that excruciating President’s Physical Fitness Test. Though my parents did not attend services there or address spiritual matters much at all, it was our “church of record.”

How I remembered trying to find a way to belong there. I offered to help Mrs. Dienes, our perfectly pressed neighbor, teach kindergarten Sunday School when I was about 16. I borrowed my parents’ powder-blue Mercury Monarch with the white interior to get there by 9:00 a.m. I sang in the choir for Paul Thomas, who always scared me a little, and I attended the youth group led by Kyle Rote, Jr., the super-cute soccer star on the Dallas Tornado. Alas, despite all my valiant attempts, I never felt like I really fit in—as if I were missing that essential component that made me worthy of the Episcopal whole.

Still, this is where my parents’ ashes are residing for eternity. My stomach tumbled as I realized I was about to see them again. Serendipity—but no coincidence. I had not been back since my father’s interment. At once, I felt the weight of generations of secrets and shame enveloped in a warm wave of comfort. I stepped closer to the austere, yet elegant, monument. There they were, together for always and forever. So present and peaceful behind the pristine limestone plaque. I stared at the inscriptions and was suddenly overwhelmed. I grieved not for what we lost but what we never had. And in that moment, I made peace somehow. Then, I paused in pure awe as I considered the convoluted series of events that had brought me to this place at this moment. There I was—steeped in memories and standing with my parents once again as I prepared for a new future. Almost too much to process.

I closed my eyes and thanked the Universe for this miraculous journey and others to come. These are the moments that amplify our being beyond all comprehension.

Then, I thought of sipping a cool, creamy root beer float at Woolworth’s . . . and I smiled.

Quantum Ghosts

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I watched another incisive and provocative film as the snow fluttered into my courtyard this weekend — “A Ghost Story.” It’s a beguiling yet disconcerting film about a woman’s loss of her husband, a musician, in a tragic car wreck close to their home. Aside from its unflinching and brazen gaze at the enormity of grief after a sudden loss, the film explores the concept of the cyclicality of time. It’s the notion that time is not linear — and the past, present, and future are infinitely entangled and concurrently unraveling in the universe’s quantum ball of string.

Shrouded in a bedsheet with eyeholes haphazardly snipped like a trick-or-treater, Casey Affleck appears as the deceased husband trapped in some sort of cosmic purgatory, eerily looming in his wife’s space as he watches over her achingly authentic attempts to grapple with grief. Given its lingering pace, excruciating at times, and perplexing narrative arc, I almost expected to see Rod Serling lurking in the corner, too. I’m not sure if it was the macabre whimsy of the strange, costume-cloaked figure — or the shy, poignant presence of his spirit, but it felt like filmmaker David Lowery peered into my soul for a brief instant.

The real twist comes when the bereaved wife moves out of the house they shared, and the bedraggled ghost remains. He is stuck there for decades, seeing residents come and go, but he also finds himself thrust back into the past — until the spiral of time circles back around again to the couples’ most recent time in the house. In one particularly potent scene, we see the mischievous specter make the very same loud bang on the piano that had awoken the couple at the beginning of the film — when they searched to the living room and were not able to find the source of the noise.

The glimpses of overlapping time and space are both unsettling and comforting somehow. On one hand, they reinforce the omnipresence of those we lose and love, but they also remind me of the peculiar events I experienced around my 26-year-old son Elliot’s death. Two days before his mysterious motorcycle accident, I was at home in the afternoon and heard a crash in my office at home. I ran up the stairs, walked in, and saw my treasured porcelain doll on the floor, shattered.

She was the first doll I ever acquired for my small but precious childhood doll collection. I loved her. We had reunited when I found her in an old, tattered box cleaning out my parents’ house after their deaths in 2014. She had been perched on a shelf of books Elliot had left behind after he moved into his own place. The entire bookcase was filled with his scholarly volumes, always reminding me this was his room, as well as my office — another example of his tsundoku. It shook me to the core at the time —though I was not sure why. I even mentioned it to Ian, Elliot’s brother who was home from the summer from college. There was no reason she should have fallen that day — no vents nearby and the cat was asleep on the couch downstairs.

I will admit that I do tend to look for connections in unusual places. As I have reviewed the events of that devastating year, 2018, and the months following, I have noticed so many unexplainable synchronicities, events and signs. Though I am confident I will never decode all of them while occupying this earthly plane, noticing them has taught me our knowledge of creation, divine wisdom, time, space and the universe is miniscule.

In fact, last year when I was rummaging around on the internet for answers, I discovered the concept of nonlocality, a quantum theory in which two or more particles exist in interrelated or entangled states remain undetermined until a measurement is made of one of them. When the measurement is made, the state of the other article is instantly fixed, no matter where it is. “In space–time as a whole, it is a continuous interaction extending between past and future events,” said Avshalom Elitzur of the Weizmann Institute of Science So, explaining the unexplainable just got even harder in the non-linear context of time and space.

Boggling.

But this I do know — time might be an illusion, but love is not.