My name is Brian. I am now 53yo, but was not entirely sure my experience would fit into this groups goals. When I read Laura's post I felt a sense of recognition and hope. I was 9 years and 4 months when my dad died in 1964. I was not allowed to go to his wake or the funeral. I was never asked about that, my mom simply decided to do it that way. Following the funeral, my mom's brother (my uncle) and her spent some time talking about all that happened, but they never took any time to sit down with me and ask me what I was feeling about it all. I don't know where my brother (he's 12 years older than me) was, he simply disappeared. In the weeks and months, then finally years that followed the feelings were burried as deeply as I could push them down, because I flet that no one would want to talk about them and listen to me. I've lived my entire life with dysthymia (low-grade depression). In 1989 I went into counseling for the 3rd time for one of the problems that grew out of this whole mess. In the course of talking with my counselor the issue of my dad's death popped up to the surface and I realized that I had never grieved for him. Like Laura with her mom, I had only a few memories of my dad. I occasionally went to visit his grave, but that never really did much for me. The very first thing I did to actively grieve his passing was to enroll him in perpetual masses with an order of priests. That was at year 30 since his death (1994). In 1996 my mom died and that further complicated the entire emotional package connected to my dad's death and my own struggle to understand what has been happening to me. Nothing much more happened until two years ago, when I began to feel angry all of the time and my temper grew more and more out of control at work. I decided to take advantage of the EAP (Employee Assistance Program). I have been slowly going back over a lot of territory and am now fairly clear about what has happened and what I feel most sad and angry about. I still feel the sadness of having lost my dad and now I also feel the loss of my mom in my life. Yet I also recognize that I feel angry with my mom for not allowing me the choice of going to my dad's funeral so I could say good-bye too. I have also identified anger with God and the Church for various reasons; most important of which was a failure to delve deeper into why I was not able to verbalize much of what has been going on with me these past 42 years. Perhaps I am irrational in my thinking about all of this, but the biggest thing that got communicated to me by my family, my church and God was that I didn't matter. I was not important enough to take the time to work with to help me through these things to finally bring my greiving to a healthy fulfillment. I have come to understabd that if someone doesn't care about my feelings, they really don't care about me. I have some idea at this point of what I need to do now, but I am highly tempted to see my life as wasted because I could never thaw out my feelings of loss on my own. One of the things I did to help me begin accepting my dad's death in my life was to write the following poem: My Father's Gone My father's gone ... he died. He's dead! Yet, no one helped me calm the dread I felt with every passing day at home, in school and even play. No wake or grave did I attend; no closure meant: "There was no end." So as a shroud of sadness fell my life became a living hell of constant pain; a rising flood that chilled and froze my very blood. My body grew, but still a boy in temperament, no childhood joy could lift my eyes above the clouds. In time, I learned to act for crowds that garnered accolades of praise yet, told me nothing of the ways of how I should become a man; my mother's son - my father's clan. Teachers... priests... nobody knew the real reason I was blue and so depressed. I could not speak about a world I saw as bleak. I dared not dream that I could thrive within a soul still-born alive. A counselor I had paid to hear me talk about my greater fear stumbled on the unseen pain I carried every year in vain, until right then. What utter shock that after 30 years o'clock the big hand came around at last. With tools I learned, I now could cast my story in a different light. Nobody understands the blight of silence stealing time to mourn, when souls we love, from us are torn. The truth unearthed, prepared me for what shook me at my very core the year my mother finally died. At 39, this rushing tide around me surged. I kept my head and made my grief my daily bread. Twelve years have passed since '96 when I stared down the River Styx. It's not too late to seek to share by writing what is good and rare about a twisting, rough hewn path through unshed tears and silenced wrath! January 10, 2009
