A Different Kind of Grief
It’s late. Joe turns over beside me in bed. He mumbles something in his sleep. I envy his rest.
My mind wanders, as it seems to every night at this time.
I think of my son Jack. I feel an ache that is too familiar to describe.
Autism grief is something that never quite disappears. It slides into the background for a while, then it rears its ugly head when you least expect it. It’s like love without a landing spot.
Spiritual leader Dr. Michael Beckwith tells us, “Pain pushes until the vision pulls.” Pain, yes. The pain of a child who longs for a life of his own, the pain of watching Jack’s siblings leapfrog over him, the pain of having so many uncertain parts to the future—this is my reality.
Yet the vision remains cloudy. Constantly, I search for the crystal ball into the future. Where will he go once this program is over? Where will he live for the rest of his life? How will he afford an apartment, or pay life insurance? I am propelled by the pain and the fear, but I can’t quite see where we’re going.
Running parallel to autism grief is an entirely different kind of grief. Or is it?
My mother.
I never planned to talk about our estrangement. The dozen conversations in as many years. The fact that she met my youngest son only a handful of times. How she was never my emergency contact or who I called after a bad day.
Then she died.
Afterward, I found all I wanted to do was talk. I wanted to talk about the dysfunction, the shame, the little band of family held together by secrets. But how? Who do you tell?
How do you explain the way these memories are punctuated by pure goodness? You see, our family was a beautiful idea. We had dinner around the table at night. We went to Sunday school once a week. Our report cards had good grades. In the summer, we drove to the ocean and jumped in the waves.
We were a beautiful idea, but we were a mess in the nighttime. We were smashed plates. We were chaos and eggshells. We were unaddressed mental illness shrouded in a fierce kind of love.
How do you explain this?
Now, my childhood home has been sold.
Lying in bed at night. I remember the odd details from each room – how the late afternoon sunlight fell across the carpet in the dining room, or the blue wallpaper she hung in the kitchen shortly after her second divorce.
A new family will move into these rooms. I consider money I never expected, and perhaps don’t deserve. How will I spend it? What is the right thing to do here? How can I continue her legacy, whatever that may be?
My mother.
My son.
Their vulnerabilities presented very similarly. Extreme anxiety, paranoia, a tendency to misread the intentions of others.
I think of the hundreds of messages in my inbox, chronicling similar familial fractures.
Again and again, daughters and mothers and fathers ask me what to do – how to mend the broken bonds. Find something, I urge them. Something to keep you connected, no matter how small.
For us it was books. Over the years I sent her novels I thought she’d enjoy: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. She sent me her favorites for Christmas and my birthday. Family Pictures by Sue Miller. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. I’ve read them so many times the covers are threadbare. I guess you could say inside each story, I was looking for a piece of my own.
When I went back to the house for a final time, every book I sent was there, lined up on a shelf next to every article I had ever written.
My breath caught in my throat.
She remembered me.
She thought of me.
My mother.
We did the best we could. This is the sentence I thought over and over again as I ran my fingertips down the row.
Next to me now, the clock ticks on the bedside table. The numbers climb toward morning.
From inside grief’s cloud, I consider ways in which we heal from things out of our control – how deeply neurodiverse brain wiring has affected the trajectory of my own life on either side: as both daughter and mother.
Dawn comes at last. Everyone leaves for work or school. I pick up my phone. I think of my tall boy. I think of sunshine, of blue wallpaper, of unexpected turn for the future.
“Good morning! I’m looking for a realtor. I’d like to look into buying my son an apartment.”
Pain pushes.
Vision pulls.
Ann Marston
March 25, 2024 @ 9:35 am
Your mother could not get good treatment for her mental illness. It was not available at that time. She had to live with it. She loved you and did the best she could. You survived. That is success.
blmaluso
March 25, 2024 @ 9:49 am
Your story touches my heart…thank you for sharing such deep felt words.
One day, I was thinking of my mother, who had been living with us, and had passed away. We did not have much of a connection while I was growing up, however, we became close while she lived with us.
I was praying, and then apologized to my mother for the ways I hurt her, or did not do my best showing her love at times.
Instantaneously, I heard her voice saying to me, “You did the best you could, and so did I.”
You brought that memory back to my heart, and also brought tears.
Love is miraculous in so many ways. Through the joys and pains, it always grows our hearts❤️
Kate Ferry
March 25, 2024 @ 12:20 pm
Somewhere “in the Middle”, we survive.
Cathy
March 26, 2024 @ 8:16 pm
I too had a traumatic childhood and was estranged from my dad for quite a few years before he died. At age 57 I finally did something that helped with my troubles, I started seeing a therapist once a week. It has helped me so much and I wonder if it could help you too. Just having someone neutral to talk to and process it all has been very helpful. I found out that it’s never too late to get help.