Earthquake (Special Edition)

(Let me be unvarnished for a moment, this episode is lightly edited so that you can see how grief affects people.  Forgive me my trespasses.)

Back in Episode 27, we talked about my father dying in hospice.  Today we discuss what happens when the loss of a loved one brings together estranged family members and stirs up unexpected emotions.  I attempt to navigate the raw and emotional journey of losing my father and reflect on the complexities that can arise during such a deeply personal experience. I find myself attempting to take my own advice, confronting the pain head-on, and sharing the bittersweet moments of family unity that emerged during my father's funeral. I discuss the challenges our family faced, including the impact of my father's second marriage and the mixed feelings it evoked.  I reflect on special moments shared with my father in his final days; how we honored his memory in a way that felt true through a traditional Irish wake, despite the undercurrents of tension. I know that grief can open new doors, close others, and ultimately lead to healing.

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Music and sound effects today by:   via Pixabay.

Transcript

Candee: 0:15

We welcome you to Solace Soul Plus Grief. I'm glad you're here. I'm Cande Lucas, a Jesuit-trained Catholic chaplain and spiritual director, and I've been involved with a bereavement ministry since 2009. We know that loss can make profound changes in people's lives. We understand how difficult it is to travel this path of grief and how important and monumental the loss of a loved one can be. So we created this podcast to help you walk with God as you grieve your losses, understand what's happening in your heart and soul as you grieve, to be available in the best way we can to accompany you on this journey. You're always welcome in this circle of healing, love and support. You've all heard me say before that I've spent 15 years in a grief ministry, helping others through the process, reminding them of God's presence in the process, hopefully giving comfort along the way, pointing out pitfalls and asking people to be gentle with themselves as they went through this journey. Now I find myself face-to-face with my own advice. My father recently died and I try to take care to avoid the pitfalls I've talked about, to experience the grief I was feeling in the moment and not put it away for future processing. My sons were with me at my father's funeral, as well as my two oldest grandchildren, who supplied amazing support. Support. As with most funerals, disparate family members came together who hadn't been together or seen each other for an extended amount of time, for sometimes many years. So, like most funerals, it has that quality of a family reunion running underneath the grief.

Candee: 3:28

My father's death was not unexpected. He'd been in hospice for several months and ill for probably the last two years, so his death was neither a shock or unexpected. But, as is always the case, the shock waves afterward are not always expected. My father's last few years were complicated by a second marriage after my mother died nearly 30 years ago. But that always brings divided loyalties, divided interests and in the end, the only thing we did all of us, the sisters, the widow agree is that we should care for him the best we could. So in the last year I spent four separate monthly visits with my dad at the end and I was with him when he took his final breath. This was important to me, as I had experienced so many people's dying breath and wanted to be there for his final moment to be special in the cosmos, and I was begrudgingly given the opportunity to do that. I am sorry to use the word begrudgingly, but, as has become clear since his death, that the underlying emotions between his daughters and his second wife, the widow, were not always expressed clearly, understood clearly or processed clearly.

Candee: 5:48

Frankly, an earthquake occurred two days after his funeral. My younger sister wrote to me in an email how she had thought the funeral was so disrespectful to the widow. Her words were very hurtful, broke my heart in many ways. But I've realized several things in the days that have passed since that email, the earthquake email. Somehow sometimes the life events and the death events in our lives cause doors to be opened, windows to be closed, people to move on, memories to be left in the basement. I knew and loved my father for 75 years. We had a complete life together before he ever met the widow. I know you can hear the resentment in my voice and hopefully by the time this gets edited it will be more useful. But right now I thought it was important to get all my feelings recorded so I can make the best sense of it.

Candee: 7:15

The grief part starts after the funeral, when the family gets together and wants to both celebrate and support each other, express their love for one another and mourn the passing of someone who was adored. Ours took the form of a traditional Irish wake --although he's not Irish, he's Danish-- in a local Irish tavern where we all sat around a giant table and ate and drank and toasted him, sang songs and remembered. It felt perfect to me. The service had gone beautifully, all of us were able to retain our wits about us and the burial would be the next day. The younger relatives stayed long after the rest of us left and celebrated into the night. But I thought of it as a true Irish wake and my sons, being Irish, set the right tone. T he morning of his burial. I had been given permission by his widow to do that portion of the service. I had prepared it many years ago.

Candee: 9:14

As my father was not is not a religious man, I wanted to put together meaningful words about him that would not be overly religious. So I took a quote from Thomas Merton, who I'm certain no one really knew was a Trappist monk, and I took other words from Karl Rahner, who I'm sure they don't know was a Jesuit priest, and I took words from Khalil Gibran, who they may have heard of, and when the Marines did their slow salute and the folding of the flag, I knew how pleased he would be. It was a sunny day, as he was laid to rest next to my mom. And it wasn't until the next day when I went back to visit the cemetery, with the newly filled in grave topped with all the flowers left from the service. It looked so beautiful and as we sat there, the wind blowing the flowers, I played 'a parting glass', a version of which my son had recorded. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful moment, and I came away from Iowa with that memory that we'd said a perfect goodbye. And it was the next day when the earthquake came.

Candee: 11:16

Relationships between sisters are always complicated, especially if there's only three of you, as the power dynamic goes back and forth and forth and back two getting along against the other, one time other two getting along against the othe r. You're always in or out of one of those circles, but this was the sister I thought I was closest to and she let go. Paragraph after paragraph of vitriol and hate that I had never seen her capable of. It was directed to both of us other sisters, the 'out' sisters-- how she had been disappointed and we had been so disrespectful to his widow by having a wake, by celebrating together at his house after the burial and at my sister's house the Saturday night before the funeral. Her disappointment was palpable and the wounds were deep and the Rubicon was crossed. But it's now starting to look like , although his widow took good care of him, she resented the fact of three grown women also mourning his passing, mourning his death. Our ideas about how his last days should be, our ideas about the funeral. Every reference to my mom was minimized, minimized as if she never existed, as if she hadn't spent 50 years of her life with him before she died, as if she didn't exist. So hard we were trying not to offend. And so I fell into the trap and I put some of my mourning aside out of respect for her, but was criticized harshly in the earthquake letter for not deferring to her enough.

Candee: 13:59

all seems so very important now, and I'm sure it won't in time, but the earthquake letter stands as a signpost, as a comma, as a semicolon, as a period, as the Rubicon and in a way it makes perfect sense. This is a new page. this is a new time, when my ties to that place, my ties to the prairie, are gone, like when you hear the wind through the corn and suddenly it goes quiet and there's no more sound. That doesn't mean the corn is gone, it only means you've ceased to hear it. That concludes another episode. A new one drops every Friday. Please join us on Spotify, amazon Music or Apple. Thank you for joining us. Spiritual direction is always available. See my contact email in the show notes. This is Candy Candee Lucas, your host, chaplain and spiritual director. Go with God. Namaste, vaya con Dios. You.