Prologue: Life at Daniel's Place

Weeks after the governor shut down North Carolina due to the coronavirus pandemic, I put on a pair of tennis shoes. It was a Sunday in April, yet my church held no services. Since I couldn't go there to worship, I drove across town to Markham Memorial Gardens. People feared the virus, but fear was nowhere on the rolling lawn dotted with grave markers and tall Carolina pines. The dead can't get Covid. And I can't get the illness from them. As I drove, I smiled at my dark humor.

But my humor evaporated once I faced the white wooden fence at the entrance. My eyes blurred with tears. The tears, which I'm a fanatic about labeling, were not tears of sorrow, hurt, or pain. They were those special tears cried when we know someone has cared for, looked after, and loved us, even when we didn't realize what was happening. My spirit had come to this place for safety, but not from Covid or our country's looming troubles. Long before news of the virus and the shutdown, this corner of the world had become my secure haven and respite.

As I walked the circular driveway, passing the familiar gravestones and landmarks, flashbacks played through my mind. Here, I had once wanted to die, before my healing had begun.

Four years into my grief, I was invited to facilitate a writing workshop. Sascha, a poet and bereaved mother who had lost both her children— the youngest to drowning and the oldest to suicide—asked me to fill in for her at a conference in Denver, Colorado. She was ill and needed a substitute. I was instructed to share how beneficial writing from heartache is. As I stood at the podium before forty bereaved parents, I knew writing helped me. But did others find it therapeutic? I introduced some writing prompts and was pleased when parents stood to read their poetry in memory of their son or daughter.

After I made it through the workshop—where I hoped no one had noticed my insecurity from being a novice—one of the event volunteers approached me. I thought she was trying to make me feel good when she said, "Alice, there was a lot of healing going on in that room." I had no idea what a room of healing looked like.

Decades later, I know. I know how a grassy landscape of remorse becomes a sanctuary of discovery and gratitude. I know how God takes our most profound agony and replaces it with his joy. I know how pouring pain onto paper transforms pent- up anguish into hope. I have experienced how a mother lacking confidence dared to seek fulfillment. This did not happen over weeks; it took years.

The cemetery welcomed me that Sunday in April. True, the dead were still silent; they could no longer share their opinion, ponder, or rush to be anywhere. For them, what was done was done; it was over. As for me, I still had a course to run— peace to absorb, ideas to wrestle with, lessons to invite, and healing to embrace. Gratitude for the quiet landscape rich with my history filled me; I started to sing. I belted out one of my favorite hymns, repeating the first verse six times because that was the only verse I knew from heart. “Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home.”

And that is another pleasure of being at the cemetery: the dead don’t complain.

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During Coronavirus Embrace Now

My son Daniel stands at the shore of the Atlantic Ocean with his arms spread behind his back and smiles into the June sun.

With beaches closed due to the Coronavirus, this is not a recent event. It was over two decades ago when we went to the beach as a family and I took the photo that I have since placed into a burnt-maroon frame. When I kiss his face though the acrylic, I know that many see the photo as a three-year-old boy enjoying a day at the beach. But it symbolizes more for me. It’s a reminder to live every day as though it is all you have.

When the photo was taken, our family was trying to do something familiar in a time when nothing felt normal. Less than two weeks earlier we’d been told the tumor in Daniel’s neck was malignant. My son went through tests, two surgeries—one to implant a double-lumen catheter— and a week of chemo. He lost his hair on the trip to the beach; it came out in clumps on the van’s back seat. “It’s sad, isn’t it?” his five-year-old sister said. “Isn’t it just so sad?”

Just the other day during the Coronavirus lockdown, we celebrated my youngest child’s 23rd birthday. Our family tradition is to go to Red Robin for birthday dinners. This week we had to adapt to something new. At a table in front of the restaurant, my husband, wearing a face mask, ordered our meals. We waited in our cars until the waitress signaled our food was ready. With meals in tow, my three kids and my eldest’s boyfriend, my husband and I, drove in our cars to a vacant parking lot in the shopping complex. I sat on a towel on the curb to eat my salad. The others sat and stood at socially-acceptable distances and consumed burgers and fries.

It was wonderful to see my adult children and hear their stories of how they are coping and adjusting to this season of strange. The restaurant where Ben worked closed, so he was laid off in March. The birthday daughter, Liz, teaches her high school students online. My daughter Rachel and her boyfriend have had an uptick in their home repair and remodeling business. “People are looking at the homes they’re in all day and see what needs to be improved,” the boyfriend said.

After we ate, we sang happy birthday. We played music on my husband’s phone and my daughters danced the Macarena. As the sun set and we said our good-byes, giving each other virtual hugs, I smiled. This was by no means an ideal dinner out, but it was all we had.

As we parted, I didn’t say, “Next year it will be better.” I did not add, “Next year we can be back inside Red Robin and enjoy a meal around a table with chairs.” I didn’t voice any of that because I do not know what next year will hold. Days before Christmas 1996, Daniel spiked a fever and we took him to the emergency room. We spent Christmas day in the hospital with him. “Next Christmas,” I said as we ate ham from the hospital cafeteria, “he’ll be finished with his protocol. We’ll all be home for Christmas then. We’ll be a normal family again.”

Daniel’s death crushed the hope that the following Christmas would be better. He contracted a staph infection at the end of January and died in February. His absence is a hole in our hearts.

In the photo at the beach, Daniel wears a cap to cover his bald head. His hands are full of sand and shells. He’s standing by the fierce waves but he looks the other way, in the direction of the sun, that smile on his face. My boy is not fearful. His expression shows that he’s happy to be at a place he loves with his family.

In the midst of lockdown we may think we want this isolation to end and for things to get back to normal. Yet the days in shelter-in-place hold value. We’ve traded a day of our lives for each one. For better or worse, nothing will be the same again. You might think things are difficult, but take a look at what you do have whether it is children, a spouse, friends, or parents. Maybe you are lucky enough to have them all, even if they are miles away.

Here and now, this is the time to stand with your arms spread out, your hands filled with life and smile into the sun.

Another bereaved parent said it best."Life is short, break the rules [but I bet he’d expect us to follow the COVID-19 regulations], forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile.” (Mark Twain)

In the Time of Coronavirus - A Time to Soul Search

Panic. Fear. Uncertainty. Disbelief. Sorrow. Control-less.

In this historical era of COVID-19, how are you affected? As you listen to the news reports that change every hour, what have you become?

A few years after my son died (those of you who know me, know that Daniel's death will always be my Ground Zero), I wrote a poem about becoming. I was not who I used to be when he was by my side laughing with me and eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. In bereavement, I was morphing into something new---like that caterpillar when he turns into a butterfly. It didn't feel pretty. There were days of loneliness, wondering who my friends were, how I would make it to the next day. One foot in front of the other was a major task. I cried so much that my eyes stayed puffy and red. I wanted to fist-punch those who said trite things. I hated who I was.

What are you doing during this fearful season of your life?

Some people are hoarding toilet paper. We laugh, but as I stared at the empty shelves where toilet paper has always been at my local Harris-Teeter, I didn't feel like laughing. When the disgust left me, the deeper feeling was a sadness toward humanity. Because to me hoarding toilet paper (of all things!) shows me that people are not only fearful, but trying. They are trying to gain some control of a control-less situation. We are told to stay home, wash our hands, keep away from crowds, and yet, all of that sounds too simple and easy. Can't we do more? We're smart, certainly there's more we can do to make this virus go away or to try to preserve some feeling of security. "I can't hug anyone, I can't go on vacation, I can't go to work (or I've lost my job), but, hey, I can have enough toilet paper. So take that, you nasty Coronavirus."

When Daniel died, I wanted to figure out why. Why had he died? Why hadn't he been miraculously saved? Why him? He had cancer, but other children with neuroblastoma lived. Then we learned from the autopsy that he was cancer-free. It was the first we had heard that news. He'd been through eight months of treatments and we'd never heard cancer-free until the autopsy report. I feared I had missed a cue. He was supposed to have lived and I messed up.

Admitting that I had no control was a long process. When we think that we have boundless control of our lives and those around us, we are living a myth.

Hoarding toilet paper, hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes is a way of trying to gain control in a chaotic era.

So what to do you want to become? How do you want to get out of your cocoon and emerge into a free-floating butterfly?

Bereavement opened the door for me to explore things I had never done much of before. In the midst of pain and suffering, I discovered that I was becoming a woman who shed spiritual platitudes ("God won't give you more than you can handle", etc.) and also someone who dispelled the myth that life is all under my control.

What can you do during this time of uncertainty?

* Write -- a poem, that short story that's been playing around in your mind, that song, that letter to a friend
* Read --- Dust off that copy of To Kill A Mockingbird or A Tale of Two Cities
* Pray --- Ask God to show you how you can love others around you and how you can surrender your life to him (good luck with that one, it is a daily task)
* Nurture friendships --- but be sure to stand at least six-feet apart
* Create --- a garden, a new board game, a speech, a blog post, a recipe
* Donate ---- food or money to a charity

Let this be the season to contribute something YOU into the world besides anxiety and fear.

The virus has affected the globe. It's a vicious thing.

When we get beyond the virus, however long that will take, and are able to resume our more normal lives, what will we have become?

Will you be wiser? More compassionate? Less selfish? Will you be someone who lives out gratitude?

Will you be the person you want to be?

Start now.