Then we shall just dance in the Rain.

 

It’s New Year’s Day.

The blogger Kathy Glow on her “Kissing the Frog” Facebook page posted a meme: “Sometimes Grief is a whisper, sometimes it’s a roar, but we never get to choose the volume.”

Her comment with her post was “today it’s pretty loud.”

 

Kim and I are on the Eastern Shore again.

Not at our usual Woolford digs, but out on Hooper’s Island and Fishing Creek.

We rented a little bungalow on the water for a couple of days and a quiet New Year’s.

Our Christmas was “pretty loud.”

Kathy Glow is a blogger and writer who lost her son Joey to cancer when he was six.

Hayley introduced me to the writing of Kathy Glow some years ago when she wrote a blog titled Pictures Can Lie in December of 2012 describing the challenges of sending out a Christmas card with a happy photo when someone was missing.

And then, how to sign that card.

 

I have shared those challenges.

Long before I was introduced to Kathy’s writing, we always tried to include Donny in our Christmas photo, one year or two we even Photoshopped him in with one of us holding his photo.

But it wasn’t always possible.

Because maybe the only family photo that year was at a wedding in July in New Jersey or something like that.  As the kids got older it became harder to nail them all down at the same time.

And most of the letters I wrote were signed…”and Donny too.”

Because that was our family.

 

It’s been ten years today since I decided to create this site to write and share.

And I am learning it gets harder.

Much was written about the challenges and the joys and the dynamics of our family.

Not that we are different from other families, all families share their days of joy with days when you don’t want to get out of bed.

(end of the thought)

 

That was New Year’s Day.

Today is January 9th.

Fast forward to today when I decided maybe I would revisit those thoughts from New Year’s Day, and I again returned to Kathy Glow.

Contained in another writing of Kathy’s was this:

 

A very wise person once said to me, “Life is one long process of grieving. We begin by grieving the loss of possessions and relationships, and we move toward grieving the loss of people or of our own physical or mental abilities that were once so natural. We grieve the loss of dreams and a former way of life.

This is the natural progression of grief and one that is to be expected as we navigate through our lives.

 

But there is also unnatural grief, and this is perhaps the hardest to accept. Sudden, gut-wrenching, life-altering grief – like a fatal accident or a fatal heart attack. Or slow, torturing grief that cannot have a good outcome. Like terminal cancer.

 

Nobody gets out of this life without experiencing grief. The one guarantee in this life is that you WILL experience grief in some way. We can’t change this, but we all must find a way to live with it.”

 

“How true this is,” I thought, as I experience getting older and facing new challenges associated with it.

I am not sure I would have always associated those challenges with grieving, but why not?

Our unnatural grief has been hard enough, but acknowledging the presence of our natural grief makes some sense and contributes to its weight.

That is part of what we are experiencing.

Giving up long loved possessions as we downsize to fit the less cluttered future we expect to face.

The downsizing of social interactions as friends and family become more distant geographically and contact less frequent or not at all.

Recognizing the physical and mental changes occurring as we, as I, get older.

Things that were once natural, now get harder.

And I think we do grieve the loss of dreams, as I realize in retirement that time may be running out for those second, third, or even fourth chances in life; and the sometimes longed-for memories of our former happy times when we were all together.

And then there is the loss of people…family members and friends.

It’s the “pile on” effect.

Surely,  having to spend this holiday season less another parent after losing Kim’s mom last June,  made these holidays that much more “louder.”

 

And we can’t escape the reminders.  The social media “memories” that pop up, and of course , Google.

As much as I love those “ten years or five years ago” Google collages and reels, sometimes they are bittersweet.

 

Today is Donny’s birthday.  He would have been thirty-nine years old today had our unnatural grief event not occurred.   I can’t even imagine what Kathy Glow or Kim or even my mom goes through, moms losing their sons; mom’s and dads losing their children,  as they search for their ways to “live with it.”  I know it’s that much more  harder this time of the year with the holidays.  And though it is often said,  it gets easier, I am not so sure I agree with that anymore.

 

A sign on the wall of the little house on the water we stayed at over New Year’s read:

If Storms Should Come, Then We Shall Just Dance in the Rain.

A nice thought, easier said than accomplished.

I have never been much of a dancer, in the rain metaphorically or otherwise.

As a result, I don’t like dancing.

I kind of dance like Donald Trump.

My memory of dancing to over seventeen minutes of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” at an eighth grade dance make me cringe.

It was torture.

Like a marathon of dancing humiliation.

I have read that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was the song writer’s drunken slurred pronunciation of “In The Garden Of Eden” as his band mate tried to capture the interpreted lyrics on paper the best he could.  In the Garden of Eden came out as In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

A nice thought to mitigate a horrible memory and to find some comfort in our grief.

In The Garden of Eden.

In Paradise.

Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

I imagine a day when we will all be together in Paradise, dancing maybe, but not in the rain; and this time I will be dancing more like Michael Jackson and doing the moonwalk.

And I can also imagine  Donny lovingly taunting me  with his little giggle, like he often did from Happy Gilmore: “You like that old man? You want a piece of me?” as he out moonwalks me into eternity.

So Happy Birthday bud,  in Paradise.

 

Postscript:

As I mentioned, it has been ten years of writing here.

It’s been my way of finding “a way to live with it.”

And I thank you for letting me share.

In January of 2023 I wrote an essay titled “Happy New Year”and explained that in our house January 10^th is real first day of our new year.

So let me today wish you all an early Happy New Year from Kim and I, the kids, “and Donny too.”

We hope your holidays were memorable and not too noisy.

 

Somewhere along the way this week I made a note of this scripture from John 14:27:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.

Sounds like good advice.

And remember…

We have In-A-Gadda-da-Vida to look forward to.

 

And thanks to Google we have collages:

And by the way, Sunday is my mom’s 92nd birthday, Happy Birthday Mom!