The Dark Night Of The Soul

Grief is like a churning sea. Just when the rolling begins to ease and a brighter horizon seems to appear in the distance a sinister sort of undertow inevitably grabs hold and down, down to the deep dark again. Days, sometimes weeks pass while down in the darkness and the hope for some kind of illumination is all but consuming. Aside from my begging the universe to not let Robbie’s death be true, I was begging Robbie to send me some kind of sign so I knew that he was still here somehow… somewhere but the darkness just lingered. Here, in the dark, all of my worst fears began shambling towards me.

To quote the incomparable Gloria Vanderbilt, “Some of us are born with a sense of loss.” I believe I’m a member of that very distinctive club. My earliest memories have to do with the loss of my father when I was four years old, so death was a very early concept for me. I suppose one of my first real fears was the thought of non-existence. The thought of “nothingness” just not “being” was terrifying to me. Of course, at four years old I wasn’t really aware of the gravity of the situation. It wasn’t like daddy was suddenly gone. In fact, he was normally gone. He was in the Navy and usually aboard ship. I only have three or four real memories of him. I remember an orange lollipop with a face on it he brought me once, and a tin Oliver Hardy doll that I could wind up and watch waddle across the floor. I remember daddy having kind of a dry sense of humor. One of my most vivid memories is of a tiny little me pushing my stroller out to him as he was laying on a car creeper underneath an old Ford he was rebuilding and saying, “Daddy, push me.” He rolled out from under the car, put his palm in the middle of my chest, gave a soft push, and then rolled back underneath the car. I don’t remember many other things other than him teasing me about lighting a fire in the fireplace on Christmas Eve so Santa would burn his britches. Everything I learned about my father was told to me by my mother or someone at church. I didn’t realize how very sheltered and insulated I had been as a child until my teens, and I’m not saying it was a bad thing, just a lot of new and different perspectives to consider. Like lots of American kids I was raised a Christian, the basic premise being that God created everything and if I was good one day I would get to go and be with God in heaven. That’s how they explain it to you as a kid. Daddy isn’t here right now, he’s in heaven. So, to me that implies that even though he’s not here in my personal space he is still indeed somewhere. I grew up with the usual, “Daddy’s looking down on me” thoughts and time marched onwards. I lost a very dear friend in my thirties and it hit me especially hard because I don’t think I ever really dealt with the depths of the loss of my father. Then Robbie chose to depart and everything I ever believed or even accepted as possible was in question. Everything.

I don’t really remember what it was that rocked my teenage “Christian” roots loose from the bedrock of indoctrination. Oh, wait, yes I do. It was something about working the McDonalds drive through on Saturday nights, serving the oh so pious older members of the youth group as they drove through slobbering drunk, and then being ignored at church the following morning. From my little pew in the eighth row or so (I was’t socially acceptable enough to the youth group elite to sit in the first three rows) I began to wonder how the behavior I was witnessing corresponded to the ideals being spouted from the pulpit. Funny how the littlest things make such life altering impacts. So began my studies into other religions. Anything relating to psychology or religion I was all over. It took decades. As a Christian, part of what I was taught was that others will try to lead you astray… beware of “false gods” don’t be taken in by “worldly” things. That was ingrained in my little psyche, so some part of me actually felt guilty for trying to learn about other religions. However, the more I learned the more I realized that there are innumerable parallels between many, many religions. I had finally reconciled what I had been taught with what I had learned (so far). I used to joke that if you wanted to categorize me you could start with Christian, Buddhist, Judaic, Hindu. At this point in my life I’m claiming aspiring bodhisattva too.

Finally, I was comfortable believing what I believed. I wasn’t just going on what I was told as a child, or blindly accepting the interpretations of others. Then my sweet, precious Robbie threw me a curve ball. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Most of the time I spent in deep, dark, depression. In the brief moments my head was above the proverbial water I spoke to psychiatrists, I joined grief counseling groups, I contacted a psychic friend I have. You may all be rolling your eyes about now, but frankly I don’t care. It’s the truth and it’s what ended up giving me the most comfort. I set up an appointment to speak to her via telephone. She asked that I not tell her anything beforehand (we met through a mutual friend and she does not do facebook-she knew nothing about why I had requested to speak to her). I called her at our agreed upon time and she picked up the phone. She said, “Forgive me, I’m driving. Your son is already giving me s**t about driving and talking on the phone. He says my son would be pissed at me.” She laughed. I was, of course, astounded. She said, “Do you have any specific questions? He asked me to start driving and he would let me know where.” I said, “No, no roll on my friend, you’ve got the wheel.” She said many things. The two things that made it very believable for me was that she told me something I always have said to my children and she told me something I thought about Robbie after his death that I had never uttered to another single soul. Because of the utter fear of death I hold, when I heard of Robbie’s choice one of the thoughts I had was, “He’s so much braver than me.” She told me, “He says, “I’m not brave Mom.”” I sat stock still. She continued, “Oh, he says to turn here. Hmm, Starr Street.” She pulled over, parked, and continued, “He says, “Mom always said that when we die we go back to the stars.”” I did always say that. One last thing she said that helped me immensely was that he was happy. He was not confused or lost. From that moment on “stars” are something I associate with my precious Robbie. I see a new one in some context every single day. Sometimes I even yell out, “There’s my star! Thanks baby.” I think he wanted to remind me that even though we cannot always see them the stars are always around us, but all too often thier illumination is only noticed during a deep, dark night.