This is the story of a woman who was healed of the loss of her parents, her only son, and her husband. She wishes to remain anonymous. She wrote the following story.
The Year of Healing
For the first few years after everybody died, I saw myself as a thin shadow lingering on the earth for some unknown reason, drifting through the empty days and nights and going nowhere. I imagined myself to be invisible, but actually it was the rest of the world that had become invisible to me. I lived in the past, where the people I had loved still lived in sunshine and were more real to me than the world around me. I felt that I had a sign hanging on my chest that said, "Don't mess with me." And for the most part, people left me alone.
Gradually the world became more real, but the presences of my family stayed with me and are still here today. The sign on my chest has faded to the point that it is almost invisible, and I have lost my own invisibility by degrees. But those early years of grief were impossibly hard.
In the exterior dimension of my life, I walked through my daily circles -- waking up, going to work, buying groceries, walking the dog and so on -- little circles strung like pearls on the time line of my life. There was no escape from the circular nature of my life, and I was ruled by time, at least in the exterior dimension.
But in my interior life, time was not linear. My mind could revisit any point in my life, then jump forward many years later, or flip through a collage of related memories in random order. These filmy thoughts flitted across the screen of my mind, all the while I was plodding though the everyday circles that went nowhere, for without my family there was no future. Not in this life, anyway.
Every morning before I even opened my eyes, I said the same prayer from the burial rite in the Book of Common Prayer, reciting the names of my family in the order in which they died:
O God of Grace and Glory, I remember before you this day my son Brian, my mother Lenora, and my husband Fred, and I thank you for giving them to us, their family and friends, to know and to love as companions on our earthly pilgrimage. In your boundless compassion, console us who mourn. Give us faith to see in death the gate of eternal life, so that in quiet confidence we may continue our course on earth until, by your call, we are reunited with those who have gone before. I ask in Christ's name, Amen.
Then I walked my Siberian Husky and got dressed for work. I kept to myself in my cubicle, worked on my computer, and talked to my co-workers only when necessary. Every now and then something would flit across my computer screen, maybe the name of a beach town, and my mind would drift across time and space to another beach, another time, another life. I could hear in my mind the waves softly lapping on the shore and the seagulls screeching high above, while the three of us hung on a raft together awaiting a wave big enough to ride to shore. I could still see the sun on Brian's honey hair and Fred's sandy mane, and I could feel the warmth and perfection of a day that felt like it could last forever. When the big wave came, Brian would body surf to shore, followed by Fred, and I would lovingly watch them while I sleepily drifted on my raft. Then the phone would ring and I would gather whatever file I needed to answer whatever question and do whatever I had to do.
In the first few months after Fred died, I walked in the evenings, sometimes for hours with my husky, and looked up into the darkening winter sky, repeating to myself over and over, "They're dead. They're all dead. Now what am I supposed to do with my life?" I likened myself to the barren trees, stretching their empty arms upward to heaven, and I did not know what to do with myself. I was only fifty and could live for many more years. For what purpose? Over and over I asked God, "What am I supposed to do now?"
I lived for Sunday mornings, when I had an hour of peace and felt closest to my family and to God. During the Prayers of the People, when we came to the part where we prayed for those who are alone, I felt my heart soar, because they were praying for me. People who didn't know me and didn't know anything about my pain were praying for me, and I could feel it. But during the exchange of the peace I had to step outside. This is hard to explain to someone who hasn't been through what I have been through, but I could not face the possibility that someone might ask me my name and whether I was married or had any children. I could not bear to answer those questions, so I stepped outside for those few minutes, then returned in time for Communion. I lived in fear that I would lose my invisibility, and I would be exposed to the world as having no identity.
And that was the crux of the problem: my loss of identity. I knew that my Redeemer lived and that on the last day I would be reunited with those who had gone before. But in the meantime, how would I go forward? How would I rebuild my life? Who was I if I was no longer Fred's wife, no longer Brian's mother? Like most women, I had always defined myself in terms of my family relationships. I was now just an invisible person who worked in a cubicle, went home to an empty apartment, walked my dog and went to sleep in silence.
Grief hurts, not just emotionally, but also physically. In the first few years after everyone died, I developed arthritis in my spine and feet, and fibromyalgia in my hands and arms, which I have heard described as "empty arms syndrome," a common affliction of women who have lost a child. I developed a painful disease of the eye called episcleritis that caused chronic inflammation and threatened my eyesight. I also had carpal tunnel in both wrists and now and then would have a panic attack that resembled an oncoming heart attack, especially just before holidays, death anniversaries, birthdays, and Mother's Day.
One Christmas season, as my depression got the better of me, I was sent to the hospital for a cardiac procedure after a nuclear test indicated that I had some blockage in my heart. Because I had no family, I had to sign advance consent for an emergency by-pass, just in case it should prove necessary. I was peaceful and resigned going into the operating room, needing no tranquilizer and just listening to Mozart and Smetana, feeling that this day I might be with my family in paradise. But then I awoke a few hours later and found, to my anger and disgust, that I was still alive. And my heart had no cholesterol in it at all; it was perfect, they told me. No, it was not perfect, I wanted to say. It was broken. And it would probably be many years before I would ever see my family again. I looked ahead and saw one uneventful year looming after another, with nothing to mark the passage of time except seasons of holidays and anniversaries, which were emotional minefields for me, and I saw no respite for my pain and grief.
However, time has healing properties. I continued to say my prayer of thanks every morning, do the exercises for my arthritis, and walk my dog. I had lost my beloved husky, but I thanked God for the love and companionship I had had with her, and I adopted a retired racing greyhound. For two months I rehabilitated her from her injury, then right before my eyes she bounded off into the street and was run over by a car. I was beginning to think I couldn't have anybody or anything to love, but I decided, No, as long as the Humane Society has dogs, I will always have a pet. So I adopted a sweet little Spitz mix from Animal Rescue, and she has become a great friend and companion.
In time I began to realize that it was my fear of loss that had caused me to push human friends away. If I didn't allow anyone to get close to me, I would never lose anyone again. The only way to make sure I was never widowed again was to never fall in love; and the only way to make sure I never fell in love was to not date. My response when anyone tried to set up with a blind date was usually, "Thank you, but I'd rather have a root canal than go out with someone I don't know." And there wasn't anyone I knew that I cared to spend an evening with, because I figured that anyone I went out with would probably expect me to be nice and to talk to him, and that was just not going to happen.
I had developed a personality like a porcupine, and those few brave souls who were still friends with me had learned to give me my space or get out of my life. About a year after Fred died, I realized I was not doing well, and I joined a bereavement group at my church. Although no one there had experienced the number of losses I had, it was good for me to be with other women who had recently lost a husband, either through death or divorce. Men rarely go to bereavement groups; men can't ask for help like they can't ask for directions, so it was just us women.
We shared our struggles and laughed at our misadventures in learning to live alone and deal with automobiles and other things that mysteriously broke, and we each felt less alone in our incompetence. I was not the only person who had no idea how many cylinders I had in my car or what they were there for.
It was in that group that I met a woman whose husband had died within three weeks of when my husband had died. This new friend was an answer to a prayer: I had asked God to send me someone who had been through a similar loss, someone with whom I could do lunch and shopping, someone who enjoyed hanging out in bookstores, and who was as electronically inept as I was. Together we figured out how to use a cell phone and how to buy a new car based on criteria other than what color it was, and we had fun together. When I went through flare-ups with my eye disease and couldn't see well enough to drive, she took me to the doctor and to pick up groceries, and I did the same for her when she wasn't well.
It was good to have a friend who was also trying to rebuild her life, though there is a world of difference between losing a husband and losing an entire family. I had nothing to look forward to in my old age, and I couldn't imagine a future for me that would hold any personal happiness. Nevertheless, I continued to live, one day at a time, trying not to look too far ahead.
Finding a woman friend was the only prayer that was answered in those years, because that was the only prayer I made, other than my daily prayer of thanks. I couldn't think of anything that would make me happy, so I didn't ask God for happiness. With all the medical problems I was having, you would think that I would have prayed to be relieved of my pain, but that's not how I was brought up. I was always told that we must ask for the grace to bear our crosses, rather than ask for our crosses to be removed.
One day as I was surfing the internet, looking for church news, I came across a website by a priest of my denomination who believed that Christians were commanded to use their spiritual gifts to heal other people. This was a radical idea, an idea that I had never seen associated with my denomination. Could he, I wondered, help me to heal from my grief-related illnesses?
Rob and I began an email correspondence, and one day he said something that no one had ever said to me: "I think I can help you." No one had ever said those words to me, and as soon as I read them, I knew that it was true. He invited me to meet with him in his church office, and I made one important condition: if he cried when he heard my story, I was out of there. If I could tell it without crying, he should be able to listen without crying. The fact was, I had lost my ability to cry, and it made me uncomfortable when other people did so. I told him about my family, the losses I had suffered, and the physical and emotional consequences of my grief. I told him that I had been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), that I sometimes flashed back to my losses, and that I had nightmares in which I re-lived the deaths of my son and my husband. In one particular recurring nightmare, I am running down a hospital corridor, racing to get to ICU -- or is it CCU? Or is it the cardiac unit? Who is dying this time? I saw Brian die, I saw Fred die, I saw Daddy and Mama die -- who was left to die? Then I realize that there is no one left but me, and my heart is pounding so hard it wakes me up. I then get the shakes and can't get back to sleep. There was a lot of healing that was needed, but for I wanted to focus first on the PTSD.
Rob spoke to me about Inner Healing and recommended a book for me to read, and we set a date for praying together. As I understand it, Inner Healing is a process in which we ask God to go back with us to the time of trauma and ask Him to walk through it with us and bring us His healing love as we re-live it. I can not express how much fear and trepidation I felt at the thought of re-living the trauma, but I summoned up my courage and met with Rob and one other person, a woman who had experience in healing prayer. We sat together in a pew and prayed together, and Rob and the woman each put a hand on my shoulder.
As they went through their prayer, I could feel the warmth of their hands increase, and I could feel the warmth spreading through my chest. I could feel myself breathing more easily and feeling more calm. We went back to the night at the hospital, to Brian's bedside, and I could see in my mind's eye the image of Jesus beside me and my husband as we said goodbye to our son. I could see Jesus there now, and I realized that he had been there all along. And I realized it was Jesus who had told me to say to Brian, "We will see you again." As I saw this vision in my mind, my tear ducts were unlocked and my tears at last began to flow.
Afterwards I became aware of a sharp pain in both of my eyes, so I pulled out a mirror to look at myself. The episcleritis had attacked both of my eyes in the time that I had been sitting there, and there was an angry redness covering most of the white area, the episclera. I took out my prescription drops, which I do not like to use because they cause cataracts and glaucoma, and put a tiny drop in each eye to ease the pain. I realized I had not thought to ask Rob to pray for my eye disease, but I told myself, First things first. Grief was the cause of all of my problems, so I had to address that before anything else. Rob offered to pray with me again, as necessary, and he said that sometimes they have to pray with a person numerous times before there is any relief.
A week later, I called Rob and told him that I felt "different." For lack of a better word, I told him I felt "lighter." Again he offered to meet and pray together as needed, and I thanked him but felt that I wanted to let the process within me continue on its own for a while and see what happened. Over the next few weeks I felt a subtle change, a sort of progressive lightening of my spirit, though my physical problems continued off and on. The following month was the anniversary of Brian's death, and it is a time in which I usually had either an attack of the eye problem or fibromyalgia or both, along with severe depression. Usually I had to take off work for a week, whether I planned to or not. This year, however, I felt all right -- not good, but normal -- which was in itself an amazing thing for me. I had no physical illness and missed no work. I felt sadness, but it was a normal kind of sadness, and I went on about my work.
Summer faded into fall, and my emotional pain seemed to fade and drop off like the leaves on the trees. I began attending Rob's church regularly, and I decided to ask for prayer for my eye disease, which was now a chronic problem. I was seeing my eye doctor every few weeks to monitor my ocular pressure, which rose as a consequence of the eye drops, and I was getting another kind of eye drop to bring down the pressure. Every time I went I had to listen to my eye doctor's constant refrain: "You have got to get your stress level down. This is a stress-related illness." And each time I said, "I know, I know." At work I had to take frequent breaks to rest my eyes, and at night my eyes hurt too much to use them at all. Most evenings I could only lie on the couch, listen to Mozart, and let the music and my prayers bring my stress level down.
At every church service there were at least two people who were saying healing prayers with anyone who asked, and I often asked. Not every Sunday, because I didn't want to put myself ahead of other people who had pressing needs also, but whenever I saw there was an opportunity and not a lot of people in line, I asked for prayers. This went on for several months with improvement for a while, then the pain in my eye would come back, and again we would pray. Then the Christmas season approached.
Every Christmas since Brian died, I have done something to honor his memory. For several years I was involved in toy drives for underprivileged children, or I bought clothing for nursing home patients. Then after a few years, the idea hit me that I should buy and decorate some little table-top Christmas trees and donate them to people who needed cheering up at Christmas. I always decorate exactly 19 trees, to symbolize each of the 19 years that I was blessed to have Brian in my life The decorating always starts with little nativity figures, to keep the focus on the real meaning of Christmas. I asked Rob if he would do me the honor this year of blessing my 19 trees, then asking members of the congregation to come up and take one if they knew someone who was sick or alone and would like to have it. He asked me if I would like to saw a few words to the congregation, but I could not, so he spoke for me. All of the trees were taken, and several people came up to tell me they were taking their tree to someone close to them who was terminally ill or in a nursing home, usually someone who was alone. My message in making and giving away these trees is gratitude: I am grateful for the 19 years that I had my son in my life, and I am grateful for the love that God has for all of us, a love that was so great that he was willing to give his Son for us.
It is hard to explain what Christmas is like for someone who has lost her parents, her husband and her son. I miss them more than I can say, especially at holidays, but I am warmed by the memories of all the love we shared. All of the things we did for each other, all of the little gifts we exchanged -- all these things were incidental expressions of the love we had for each other. Nothing that happens can take away the fact that we had what we had, and I am grateful every day. And I know that I will see them all again.
My friends at church continued to pray with me and for me, and eventually the day came when I could tell them that I had been pain-free for several weeks and was now able to use my eyes at night, even after using them all day at work. I believe that this made them as happy as it made me
In the spring I had to go Chicago for my job, and I dreaded it because I have a problem with crowds and traffic which is related to my PTSD. On the day that Brian died, Fred and I had gotten the call that every parent fears more than anything in the world, the call that told us that our son had been badly injured in an accident. We were told that he was still alive but that we had to get to the hospital as soon as we could. It was the five o'clock rush hour and the traffic was at a virtual stand-still all the way to the hospital. I still re-live that moment every time I am stuck in traffic. I re-live the confusion and helplessness and searing pain. And now I had to go to a large city for a week and ride twice a day in traffic in a bus full of other people from my company, in traffic that might come to a standstill at any time. Fortunately, this happened only once, as we were going back to the hotel in the evening. I closed my eyes and visualized myself on my couch, listening to my Mozart, and prayed to God to keep my heart beating at a normal, steady rate. I do not believe my panic was visible to anyone except me, thank God. Pain is a very private thing.
In the week before Mother's Day, I fell into a steep depression and had a recurrence of espiscleritis and fibromyalgia in my arms. Around Mother's Day, it feels like the whole world is having a party to which I am not invited. I guess it's inevitable that all the happy mothers of the world have to ask me, "Do you have any children?" -- not imagining that there could ever be anything other than a happy answer to that question. I took a few days off, walked on the beach, and then went back to work. After a few days the episcleritis and fibromalgia cleared up, but I had to fight harder with the depression, as it continued to linger into summer. However, I rejoiced that my eyes were perfectly normal, and I could read every evening with no pain, and for this I was grateful.
By August the depression had completely lifted, and I took a week off around the anniversary of Brian's death, not because I had to, but because I felt it would be a good time for me to be away from work and not be required to do anything. I took care of some household chores I normally don't have time for and planned a couple of day trips with friends to some nearby beach towns. However, man proposes and God disposes. I tripped on a curb and sprained my foot, and my dermatologist had to remove a pre-cancerous growth next to my lip, a reminder of too much time spent on the beach. I mentioned these things to Rob and expressed the thought that if any of my skin damage turns cancerous and mars my face, I will simply deal with it and go on with my life, and Rob remarked, "That is the exact opposite of depression." In other words, the depression is officially gone.
I ended up spending most of my vacation week on the couch, grateful that my foot was just sprained and not broken, and grateful that the growth on my lip was pre-cancerous and not cancerous. I was especially grateful that my eyes were healthy. I could read, and I could write on my laptop, so I began writing down some of my life story. What struck me most vividly is that I have been through some tragic losses, but I have never been alone. I may appear to be a solitary type of person, but the truth is I have never been alone in my life. God has been there through my worst moments of pain and loss, even when my pain blinded me to the sight of His holy presence, and He was all the time giving me strength and love. This was the lesson that was brought home to me a year ago in my first healing prayer with Rob: God was with me all along, and His healing love is with me now.
What is healing, and what does it mean? How does God heal us through the intervention of the prayers of others? I think that healing is about a return to the presence of God, and in that presence, illness flees. Our prayers do not bring God to us: He is always here. We may not be aware of His presence because we are facing away from him, but our prayers can bring us back into the presence of God, face to face, so that we feel Him near us. Through the prayerful process of Inner Healing, I went back to the moment of trauma and saw Jesus there, and knew that He had never left me. Nothing in the world could be more painful than losing my only child; God knows that. And because this is the way humans are built, God knew that the only way He could make us understand how much He loves us was to allow His only child to die for us. My pain will never completely leave me in this life, but I know that my Redeemer lives and that I will see Him again -- and because of my Redeemer, I will see my family again. Thank you, Lord.
