The Not-So-Merry Month of May
The Merry Month of May – a song, a poem a line often used to describe the coming month.
Or how about, April Showers Bring May Flowers? We often say that to ourselves as we endure the last of the cooler Spring rainstorms.
May is a month that so many look forward to its arrival. From young to old, May is the end of school and the hope of coming Summer vacations. I once felt that way too. Now, for me, May is a hard month. It is not filled with merriment or flowers…at least not in the way I once thought of those things. It is a month I approach with caution and a guarded heart.
May once was a month of birthday celebrations and Mother’s Day and Memorial Day and all of the good times that those days were steeped it. Now, don’t get me wrong, those days still happen, and they are still joyous occasions, and yet, now they are days that contain tears of sorrow mingled with the tears of joy.
Allow me to share what May now looks like for our family since 2017, four years this year.
May 5th: our grandson’s birthday (2014)
May 14th: The day we made the hardest decision to place our son into hospice – in 2017 this was also Mother’s Day.
2nd Sunday in May: Mother’s Day
May 16th: Our son’s birthday (he turned 31 two days after entering hospice)
May 21st: the last coherent, understandable words I heard my son speak.
May 25th: our son took his last breath here with his earthly father and his first with his Heavenly Father.
May 26th: my birthday, I turned 49 the year he died…I stepped into a biblical year of jubilee that would be a year of deep sorrow and lament.
May is a hard month for us. You might have a hard month that you walk through each year. I feel like if you don’t, it is probably inevitable that you will at some point in your life. It is simply part of the human experience that hard things happen in a sin-filled, broken world. We live in bodies that wear down and succumb to illness and disease. We often must accept the consequences of other’s poor choices and evil actions that would exact a toll on our lives. If this past year has taught us anything, it is those truths.
Maybe you are experiencing your first year of hard things. Maybe you are in the process of those hard things happening and you know that next year will be the year that you navigate a painful month. Here are some things that I’ve learned in this short time of learning to live with the pain of deep loss.
It is ok not to be ok. New grief is uncharted territory. It is often explain as having survived a shipwreck and you are being pounded by torrential waves while you cling to a sliver of wood. You struggle to find your way to the surface of the water after each wave, gasping to fill your burning lungs with air before the next wave crashes on top of you again. This one might be the one that sinks you to the bottom. Its ok to not be ok. If you are walking with someone who is hurting, remember, they don’t need to follow what you think is ok, just support them where they are at.
There is no timeline for grief. And anyone who say differently doesn’t know what they are talking about. Everyone is on a different path and each loss is different. Recently someone said to me, “eventually you will get over it.” No, no I won’t ‘get over it’ – deep love means deep loss and pain. You don’t get over the death of a child. The pain doesn’t get smaller, life simply gets bigger around it. When we are loving and supporting those who are hurting, we need to be mindful that we are not placing our expectations of how we think they should be processing – it is not our walk.
Give yourself grace to say no. We are getting ready to mark 4 years since PJ died and I walk into not just May, but any month that has big celebration in them, with grace and the freedom to say ‘no’ or to decline invitations. I am very mindful to give myself an out. On Mother’s Day my hope is always to make it through all of the services at church (after all, that’s my job), but I haven’t done that the past 3 Mother’s Days. Grace, grace, grace. This year I made sure that I am not locked into a commitment that I cannot leave campus should I need to. I have high hopes, and I also have grace for myself to know that its ok to say, ‘this is too much, and I need to get out of here.’ You can give yourself the same grace – its ok.
It won’t always be this hard. The first year was hard. The second year was brutal. Then the edges of the pain started to soften ever so slightly. I don’t ever anticipate that the pain will be gone. Remember what I said about life getting bigger around the pain? As life gets bigger, it helps to cushion against the sharp places that never become less ragged. There will be moments, days and sometimes many days in a row, where something will hit you, and the hard edge of the loss cuts the tender wound wide open again. And once again you are reminded that its ok to not be ok.
Grief is not linear. There is not a starting point and an ending point. I’m not really sure I understood this before PJ died. Actually, I know I didn’t understand it. Somewhere in my naïve mind I thought you went through 5 stages of grief and it was done. Wrong. Big wrong. Grief is like 50 strands of tangled Christmas lights with random broken bulbs here and there, sure to slice you wide open right when you think you have a knot untangled. And right about the time you think you can see how to unravel the next segment; something comes along and makes a new mess of knots and broken bulbs.
Joy and grief can coexist. I'm learning and living the hand in hand walk that joy and grief do together. One is young and smooth, easy to caress. The other is calloused and weathered, rough to touch - marked by the weight of scars. The exist together, not separated. Entwined and enmeshed. Some days find joy holding grief in both hands, softly and caring. Other days grief seems to be squeezing joy until fingertips turn blue.
PTSD is not just for soldiers. I thought that for many years. Decade in fact. My dad suffered horrible PTSD from Vietnam. It was decade after they returned home that the medical community because to have a name for this mental battle wound that needed to be addressed. Yes, surely those who face war would fight this internal battle as well – not others though. And certainly not me…I’ve never fought a battle. This thought process changed when I found myself in an urgent care thinking I was having a heart attack. Praise God the nurse practitioner was also a veteran and she brilliantly helped me navigate the next steps of anxiety/panic attacks and addressing PTSD from caregiving and loss. If you find yourself struggling the next best step is often therapy and medication. There is no shame in my therapy game (or medication for that matter). Some of the hardest battle scars are those that are not visible. This is where we can hold space for and carry one another.
My lessons are daily. My walk with grief is hourly. I miss our son so badly it physically hurts. I look towards the month of May much like I used to wait for a tornado to pass by the house when I was a kid. Sometimes the trees are torn up by the roots and thrown into the carport or the neighbor’s house. Other times it is nothing but wind rattling the windows. But all the time, the One who wrote my story before I was born controls the outcome and holds me tightly to Him. He is my storm cellar. He is my dance teacher. He is my companion on the path that is this life.
I will be sharing more of my story over the coming months – but if you are walking in a hard season, I would be honored to pray for you. Just leave a comment or send me an email at thecreativetablepodcast@gmail.com – we are better together.
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Photo by Jake Thacker on Unsplash
