Read Online Resilience by Elizabeth Edwards - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Edwards
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loss and grief and anger and doubt, they were already here. There is a song written by Billie Holliday, “Good Morning, Heartache.” She captures, in a song grieving the loss of love, the desire to avoid the pain and the impossibility of eluding it. “Stop haunting me now, can't take it no how. Just leave me alone. I got those Monday blues, straight throughSunday blues,” she starts. And then she capitulates to it: “Might as well get used to you hangin' around, good morning, heartache, sit down.” Pull up a chair.
We pulled up chairs, in front of computers all over the world, and we talked. At any hour of the day or night, there was always someone there, at their chair waiting for you. In the years since I typed my first message I have met a handful of the people with whom I shared my darkest moments and my deepest doubts. And although each one of those meetings was satisfying, an odd and wonderful reunion, I always worry, as it appears we might meet, that our in-face differences will somehow come between us. Wade, at seven, was asked, for a Martin Luther King Day celebration in school, what lesson he had learned from King.
Look at the inside of people, not the outside
, he wrote. The wish of a seven-year-old boy and now the wish of a forty-six-year-old woman. I did not want anything, like thick accents or huge tattoos, to strain or test the tender strand on which I so relied. Well, we met and we were alike sometimes and different others, and it was a comfort each time, and maybe now I would not even notice the differences. Or at least I would not care.
The communities—alt.support.grief (an Internet newsgroup), Cendra Lynn's griefnet.org (a collection of e-mail lists), Tom Golden's Web Healing pages (a discussion bulletin board)—all functioned a little the same way. A person who recently lost a loved one would post about their daughter or father or wife—an introduction—and those who had been participants for a longer period of time would respond. Many responders would mention their own loss (I found it hard not to do that), but some would merely be embracing. It took a while to write of Wade. I wanted it to be just right, to reflect the boy more than my pain, to be the tribute he deserved rather than a howl from me, and maybe, honestly, I wanted to make people want to know him. He would never again say Hello, my name is Wade. So I was doing it, and that was a pretty daunting responsibility. The paragraphs that began this chapter were the way I introduced Wade to my new community.
But sharing Wade, making certain that to the extent I was able I parented his memory as well as a mother might, that made that day easier, which made the next day easier. I created a new place forhim. Just as I grew to know Wally and Michael and Christian, Lucas and Liza and Chase, their grieving parents grew to know Wade, or the version of Wade I showed them. And there, frankly, he was a nearly perfect boy. And there, I could be less than a perfect mother and less than a perfect grieving mother and still feel safe. The central premise of the groups, which was largely but not entirely honored, is that we protected one another. Anyone could ask anything or express a fear or expose an indiscretion without fear of being criticized. We all knew the new boundaries of our existence. Everything was safe. It was more than therapeutic; it was a new home where Wade's memory had a place.
In this wholly ethereal world where no one had a physical presence, I could accept his physical absence—in a way—and I could parent his memory, keeping that a central part of who I was. In this community, it was all I was: Wade's mother. A decade later, I talked to Astrid, Christian's mother. What have you been doing? she asked. I paused. Astrid didn't know anything about me beside Wade. I quit practicing law, I started. You were a lawyer? We have had two more children. My husband ran for the senate. The state senate? No, theU.S. Senate. He won, and we
We pulled up chairs, in front of computers all over the world, and we talked. At any hour of the day or night, there was always someone there, at their chair waiting for you. In the years since I typed my first message I have met a handful of the people with whom I shared my darkest moments and my deepest doubts. And although each one of those meetings was satisfying, an odd and wonderful reunion, I always worry, as it appears we might meet, that our in-face differences will somehow come between us. Wade, at seven, was asked, for a Martin Luther King Day celebration in school, what lesson he had learned from King.
Look at the inside of people, not the outside
, he wrote. The wish of a seven-year-old boy and now the wish of a forty-six-year-old woman. I did not want anything, like thick accents or huge tattoos, to strain or test the tender strand on which I so relied. Well, we met and we were alike sometimes and different others, and it was a comfort each time, and maybe now I would not even notice the differences. Or at least I would not care.
The communities—alt.support.grief (an Internet newsgroup), Cendra Lynn's griefnet.org (a collection of e-mail lists), Tom Golden's Web Healing pages (a discussion bulletin board)—all functioned a little the same way. A person who recently lost a loved one would post about their daughter or father or wife—an introduction—and those who had been participants for a longer period of time would respond. Many responders would mention their own loss (I found it hard not to do that), but some would merely be embracing. It took a while to write of Wade. I wanted it to be just right, to reflect the boy more than my pain, to be the tribute he deserved rather than a howl from me, and maybe, honestly, I wanted to make people want to know him. He would never again say Hello, my name is Wade. So I was doing it, and that was a pretty daunting responsibility. The paragraphs that began this chapter were the way I introduced Wade to my new community.
But sharing Wade, making certain that to the extent I was able I parented his memory as well as a mother might, that made that day easier, which made the next day easier. I created a new place forhim. Just as I grew to know Wally and Michael and Christian, Lucas and Liza and Chase, their grieving parents grew to know Wade, or the version of Wade I showed them. And there, frankly, he was a nearly perfect boy. And there, I could be less than a perfect mother and less than a perfect grieving mother and still feel safe. The central premise of the groups, which was largely but not entirely honored, is that we protected one another. Anyone could ask anything or express a fear or expose an indiscretion without fear of being criticized. We all knew the new boundaries of our existence. Everything was safe. It was more than therapeutic; it was a new home where Wade's memory had a place.
In this wholly ethereal world where no one had a physical presence, I could accept his physical absence—in a way—and I could parent his memory, keeping that a central part of who I was. In this community, it was all I was: Wade's mother. A decade later, I talked to Astrid, Christian's mother. What have you been doing? she asked. I paused. Astrid didn't know anything about me beside Wade. I quit practicing law, I started. You were a lawyer? We have had two more children. My husband ran for the senate. The state senate? No, theU.S. Senate. He won, and we
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