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Self Improvement > Grief Loss > An Opening: Revisiting An Old Loss
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Article rating : 2.00, 1 votes. Author : Stephen Gilbert
I can't explain where, after thirty-one years, the need to
visit my mother's grave came from. I was driving south on
Highway 99, thinking about this and wondering what to
expect when I got there. I first started feeling this need a few
months earlier and had ordered a copy of her death
certificate from the Office of Vital Statistics in Sacramento.
The death certificate gave me information that I had never
known: what the coroner had determined to be the cause of
death, where she was found, that she had been cremated,
and where she was buried.
My older brother, who was then twenty-one, had
made all the arrangements for cremation and burial. He had
not
seen the urn that mother was put in, nor the grave plot
where she was buried. Our family handled difficult times by
getting the job done, ignoring the pain and "bucking up"
we were all that way, even me at fourteen.
Not one of her children, a daughter and three sons,
had
ever been to see her grave. Our mother represented some
significantly painful times in all our lives. As much as we
claimed to have moved on and gotten over these issues, we
still couldn't bear to be in her presence. So, now, here I was,
entering unfamiliar and somewhat frightening emotional
territory, drawn by a need which I could no longer ignore.
The cemetery personnel helped me find mother's
plot.
The sight of her name engraved in the granite plaque began
to bring the reality of my mother into my heart. I sat in the
grass before her grave reading her name over and over,
feeling in the same breath a deep sadness and a sense of
relief. I wrote a poem:
Elizabeth A. Gilbert
1912 - 1965
The phone call
just after Christmas
and I was carefully told
that mother had died.
I was only sad:
what had been a slow process for her
was now confirmed.
Today - thirty-one years later -
I came to see her grave.
I came not expecting anything from her
and not knowing what to expect from myself.
For those thirty-one years I have tried
to ignore the life of this one person
who carried me in her womb.
When ignoring didn't work,
disclaiming, dishonoring and disengaging came,
and almost too easily.
I thought maybe I would cry tears of anger
of loss, of loneliness, of despair,
but none of that was there.
She is planted midway between a valley oak
and a lovely spreading willow tree,
each not more than ten paces away.
The simple concrete and granite marker,
I realized, had never been touched
by anyone she had touched.
That changed today:
I passed my handsover its surface
and blew the dust
out of the channels
of the engraved letters that have spoken
her name only to the unhearing ears
about her.
They now spoke to me.
No. There was no anger or remorse -
although I did ask forgiveness
for this visit taking so long to happen.
I closed my eyes in the shade of that oak,
and I remembered...
my mother's abundant laugh and energy;
the way she shielded my eyes from the Arizona sun;
the songs and circle of glowing faces
about the campfire.
There are not many memories yet,
but these are the ones that came to me
as I looked at her grave.
You are not abandoned, mother.
I need you and want you as you did me.
I am finally here to learn the remaining lessons
and to remember.
Upon returning home, I wrote my two brothers
and
my sister a few words about this experience and enclosed
the poem. I expressed the thought that this cemetery in the
Central Valley really isn't where mother belongs. The
response I got from all three of my siblings showed me that
something in their hearts was drawing them in a similar
direction - my visit and my poem had opened some
possibilities that none of us had considered before.
We decided to have her cremated body removed
from
the cemetery. We would take them to a place in Oregon
where she had grown up, and where we had spent many
summers as a family. This seemed right and good to all of
us. Being the funeral director in the family, I offered to make
the arrangements with the cemetery. I had no idea of the
power that this next experience would hold for me. I again
drove down to where mother was, this time to bring her
home with me. Afterward, I wrote a letter to my niece
describing this experience:
"When I arrived at the cemetery, they had
already
dug down to where mother's remains were encased in a
cement vault. Two young guys had done the digging and
were taking a little break, leaning on their shovels.
Everyone was quietly respectful of me when I
walked
up. The lady there offered to bring me a cup of coffee. One
guy in a tie commented on the beautiful valley oak
quercus lobata and educated me on their efforts to save
them.
It was an interesting perspective for me as a
funeral
director to feel the efforts to make me more comfortable
sincere, yet unnecessary. People just need to be allowed to
have their experience, and given the emotional and
interpersonal space for that experience to happen. It doesn't
need to be facilitated, encouraged or stoked.
They were able after a little effort to loose the top of
the
urn vault, and lift it off. Mother's cremated remains had been
placed in a simple pine box, and then inside the concrete
vault. When the vault top was lifted off by one of the guys
lying on his belly, arms outstretched into the grave, I could
see that the pine box had deteriorated, and the cremated
remains sloughed out. After the top of the vault was out, the
guy carefully lifted out the flat concrete bottom on which were
the old pine urn and mother's remains. He set them down
on the grass next to the hole. I had brought a container with
me for just this purpose. They all stood around watching
me.
Up to now I was pretty removed from the occasion.
They
were doing their cemetery duty and I was familiar with it all.
But now, there I was, kneeling in the grass with what was
left of my mother in a little pile before me. I began picking up
the ashes in my hands and placing them in the container I
had brought. I couldn't remember the last time I had touched
mother over thirty-two years ago. Here I was touching her:
not a picture or a memento - I was touching her. These
cremated remains became something different to me now. I
have seen thousands of "sets" of cremated remains in my
work, and have had the intellectual knowing that they had
once been a person. But now my personal experience was
that here was my mother.
I had the sense that at this time, this occasion, this
place of awareness, I was touching and holding her more
intimately and closely than I ever had before. Perhaps this
intimacy could only be borne out of the journey of our lives to
this time: my life passing through the crucible of my
experience, and her body being reduced to ashes. Fire does
reduce things to their most basic elements.
One of the fellows brought me a brush and a little
scoop, but I continued to gather mother up in my hands. He
offered to help, but I declined the offer saying that I needed
to do this myself. He shook his head, seeming to realize
that his good intention came more from something stirring
in his heart than he realized. He stepped away a few paces.
When I was done, I asked that the large and quite
heavy
grave marker be placed in my car. I also took the vault that
had held mother beneath the earth for thirty-one years, and
the decrepit pine urn. My sister and brothers would want to
have an experience of all this: where she has been all these
years, waiting for a reunion of those who carry her legacy.
As I drove north, I pictured mother sitting next to me
she really was present in the car. I pondered what I would
say to her, what I would want her to know about my life, who
I am. I cried. I realized how much I had missed mother, how
much I have loved her, and how ready I am to let go."
My brother, the one who had made the
cremation
and burial arrangements thirty-one years earlier, came to
visit me. He knew I had mother, the grave marker, the urn
and the urn vault. He wanted to see it all. As he looked at the
marker with her name engraved in the plaque, he began to
weep. He wanted to wash it. I got him a bucket of warm
water, a brush and a sponge. He knelt down and began to
gently and carefully wash mother's name and the granite
which held it. I could relate to what he was feeling, but this
moment was for him.
We have not yet taken mother to Oregon, but the
plans
are set. The four of us will gather on her birthday in June to
scatter her cremated remains. We will have our families
with us. I am taking the time now to consider what words I
will say and what will be most meaningful for myself, my
three siblings and our children and mother. I have the
distinct awareness that this time of unity with my mother will
be a significant moment for my children in knowing a
grandmother they have never met.
In my profession, I hear the word "closure" used
frequently. I think this word reflects an attitude that
permeates much of our culture that following a death
something needs to be closed or brought to a conclusion. In
my experience I found that "opening" is what truly brought
the life, death and influence of my mother into the light of
understanding, love and release. I am not an expert in
psychology, but I have come to my own conclusions about
grief: it is not an emotion, it is an emotional process. In our
culture pain is something we avoid, hence we want
"closure," we want it over. Grief is painful, but avoiding the
pain is avoiding the process, which only keeps a person
stuck. Moving through the process however long that
takes brings not closure, but opening.
For better or worse, I am a person that has a
history, a
legacy, a heritage. What has been before shows itself in
who I am. And then this is given to my progeny. This
experience with my mother has opened me to an
awareness that my life doesn't just begin and end, but it is a
part of a continuum of life and death. I am now learning to
honor who I am now and where I desire to go by honoring
where I have come from. My sincere desire is to contribute
to the lives of those I love most dearly, to make a difference
for them and for the world I live in. I have seen that "opening"
is the only way to do that with both conscious intent and
personal power.
--------
Stephen Gilbert has spent more than 30 years in
personal and professional coaching, griefwork, training,
ministry, and funeral service. He is certified as a
Management Effectiveness Coach, a Griefwork Coach, and
is a licensed funeral director. He works both in corporate
settings and with individuals. Through his coaching,
individuals become more effective in critical areas of life,
such as career direction and change, addiction recovery,
creative expression, interpersonal relationships, and
attaining personal and professional goals.
He is well known as a powerful workshop leader if
the field of griefwork. His workshop, called Being With
Grief, has help hundreds of people move through some of
the most challenging of human experiences. He also offers
training and workshops care giving professionals and other
that work directly with the bereaved.
Stephen offers coaching services for personal
transformation, grief process and professional development
in either group or individual contexts.
http://www.personaLegacy.com
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