It sounds almost funny for me to say this now, 18+ years after losing my dad, but for the longest time, my only perpetual companion in the journey through life without my mom and dad was my friend Grief. You remember him, right? From my previous post, my buddy who hangs around my neck and sometimes crawls on my back for a horsey-ride when I least expect him. Sometimes he simply hugs me. Sometimes, he strangles me nearly to death.
But Nikki. . . you have so many people who know what you’re going through. Who have been where you’ve been!
No. No I haven’t.
Did you hear me? Should I scream it from the rooftops? You don’t understand. You’ll never understand. That’s what Grief whispers in my ears when I’m home alone and I could really use my dad’s wisdom. It’s what Grief tells me, rather matter-of-factly, when I cut my finger horribly and I need a mom, and my lovely neighbor who has stepped in on occasion, isn’t available. It’s what Grief howls at me when I’m out on my bike alone training for a ride I’m only participating in because my parents are gone. He reminds me ALL OF THE TIME that I’m alone and they’re gone.
Grief insulates me and isolates me from others who are dealing with their own losses by telling me all day, EVERY day since April 12, 2001, that no one understands what I’m going through. Watching my dad go from being hail and hearty to thin and wasted over three and a half years, all while firmly believing he’d find a way to beat cancer took my emotions through Tour de France-like peaks and valleys. Watching the person I was most like on this earth stop breathing, didn’t just break my heart. It altered the very fiber of who I was, and who I might have been had he lived. Grief reiterated to me that I was alone in my sadness on August 28, 2012 as I signed my mother’s Do Not Resuscitate order and walked to the waiting room to tell those there that I had done so, and again on the 29th, when I walked out of the hospital room alone among my loved ones.
Grief, in his own way, just wants me for himself. He isolates me from my life, hugging me and keeping me warm in my insulated little world away from everything that could hurt me. He consoles me when it hurts to breathe from missing my parents so much. He pats me on the back, telling me it’ll be alright if I stay home by myself, because he’s the only one who understands how I feel about such an all-consuming loss. He knows it’s not just my parents that I’ve lost, but the life I had with them, and the life I might have had, had they lived. Most of the time, he’s the only one who knows every iota of what I feel and what I don’t feel about losing my mom and dad.
In my isolation, I’ve learned many things. I’ve learned that the Kubler-Ross model is utter bullshit for me, because I know my parents aren’t coming back – I’ve never denied it, bargained for more time, nor have I wended my way through the 5 stages because there has only ever been depression and anger. I’ve learned just how blindingly angry I am that I’ve been cheated by this, this disease that doesn’t discriminate, yet took BOTH of my parents. I’ve learned how to corral that anger and use it to negotiate for time out of my Grief-induced prison cell. I’ve taken my anger and pushed outside of my comfort zone to publicly proclaim my war against the plague I lost my parents to. Grief doesn’t particularly like being out in public with others, and there are moments when I succumb to his isolation while surrounded by hundreds of others, all dealing with their own Griefs.
When I started riding, I thought it would make me feel better. I thought it would give me purpose and that purpose would become my Purpose and replace my Grief. It would bring me solace in a parent-less world and I would find the holes inside me filled by something greater than self, greater than Grief. It’s incredible to me how utterly naive I was to believe that. Instead, in many ways, riding made me feel worse. As I correlated my riding with my respite from my Grief, Grief then decided I needed to ride WITH him. My riding, my Purpose became something I had to convince myself I needed to do, instead of something I wanted to. I took part in the Ride for Roswell, not because I wanted to do something more, but because I felt compelled to. Was that because of my Grief? Yes. But, it was also in spite of my Grief, something he never neglected to inform me while I trained and prepared for each year’s Ride effort. He was allowing me to do this, instead of me deciding to do it.
After 18 years of having Grief for a best friend, I’ve learned many things. I have more friends who have lost loved ones to cancer, than those who have not. Over the last 7 years of riding, I’ve written the names of loved ones from friends and family and perfect strangers on my skin to remind me when Grief tells me I can’t, that I can because they can’t. I’ve shared my journey through this parent-less life plus my ride-or-die Grief hundreds of times, and in each retelling, I feel Grief’s grip become less like a clutch in my heart, and more like a caress. Grief still tries to assert the idea that I am isolated in my losses, but his voice has become hoarse this year.
Because this year, this year, I’ve decided that I have become Grief’s prisoner for far too long. Grief has allowed me parole and I’m doing something crazy and insane and epic. I’m riding my bike across New York State with 180 other people who have their own stories of grief and love and loss. Grief, feeling his hold loosening on me, has inserted his friend Doubt in my brain, and it’s entirely likely I’ll ride the whole way with his company in my head. But, Grief can no longer tell me that no one else understands what I’ve been through, because I know better. While no one, even my family, knows what I have been through, I now fully comprehend that I don’t know what they have been through. I am no longer isolated and insulated with my Grief, I’m learning to live with a more mature version. One where I can allow myself to feel his weight, but not allow it to crush me. One where I can hear his voice whispering in my ear, but not allow it to block out everything else and fill me with darkness and depression. This Empire State Ride isn’t just a physical challenge for me, but a way for me finally and fully transition my Grief into fuel for my Purpose. I will never be free of him – I know that. But for far too long, I’ve allowed Grief to take hold of the reins of this life, and it’s well past the time where I take those back.
I leave on this journey a week from today. I’ve trained – perhaps not enough, but as much as I could have. I’ve cried – more than I should, but never enough for me to get it all out of me. I’ve spent nights awake – thinking, planning, worrying, contemplating but mostly anticipating what this week riding will ultimately mean for me. I’ve met people along the way – people I now consider friends, each with their own reasons, their own sadnesses, their own Griefs. And I have had a talk with Grief – a heart-to-heart about how after 18+ years of being my friend, I need him to become my reason and my motivation and work with my Purpose in getting me to the finish line in Niagara Falls, where I know my angels will be heralding my arrival.
After all, this time, this Empire State Ride isn’t simply the culmination of my life with Grief. It’s coming across two roads diverging in the woods, and making my choice to take the one less traveled by.
N.K. Murray 