Cooling My Own Pooridge--A Status Report

 

We are holding together.  But we’re missing a part of us that nags.  Gretchen looked at us while we sat down for Father’s Day dinner a few months back and sighed, “Well, now we’re four.”  And that pretty much sums it up. We are enough and still short all the same.

Door County 2009

The weekends are the hardest, when there’s more time to think, more space.  I think each of us looks for things to close the space down, whether its projects around the house, binge watching Netflix or burying a nose in a book.  But we each are striving to find the strength to face that space, that void, and grieve. And laugh.  And celebrate our boy. But too often we give in to the distraction.  As C.S. Lewis says in A Grief Observed, “They say an unhappy man wants distractions—something to take him out of himself.   Only a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there s

hivering that get up and find one.  It’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy; finally dirty and disgusting.”

I am dog-tired.

I don’t know where exactly Griffin is.  I know he is not the same boy I knew.  Likely he is infinitely wiser than I and more compassionate.  The thought both lightens my load and darkens my heart.  I wish for him peace, and joy, and the wholeness he was robbed of in his brief time with us on earth.  But it stabs me to think he’s changed in any way.  I want my son back and if he’s been transformed I am missing it and it gives me all the more to grieve.

I think the more important question to answer is not where Griffin is but where am I?  Where he is, is all “all guesswork; I’d better keep my breath to cool my own pooridge.”  One cannot be present and distracted in the same moment.  So in those daily moments when I come up for air and find myself present, I am confronted with the challenge of finding compassion for myself.  How do I release my guilt for my failings.  Because I will only be as compassionate with my girls as I am with myself.  And God knows they need my compassion, my presence, my heart and my ear.

Sometimes I think I am drowning.  Composure only comes in glimpses.  Fully formed thoughts only in hindsight.  I am swimming in self-pity and  if I am being honest, I am using that self-pity as an excuse to avoid “cooling my own pooridge”.  My life is a series of distractions interrupted by moments of clarity.  In those moments of clarity I plot and plan to stay present, but an e-mail comes, I check Facebook or the New York Times website and I am carried away from my pain, their pain, and am temporarily numbed to the suffering inside and around me.

So, we are holding together.  Fitfully, yet hopefully as to know the challenge is the first giant step in transformation.  I hope.  

The Belly Of The Whale

I am in the belly of the whale.  It is dark, damp and smelly.  I can’t see my hands and I can’t move more than a few inches.

 

Why am in this belly?  Is it my rebelliousness being punished?  Does God want me to learn something?  Or is it just cosmic fate?  Probably a bit of all three.  The God I know wouldn’t wish this on me.  But as fate has it, I’m here and there’s something to learn.  And that learning is a paradox.

 

My rebelliousness is that I want to change.  I want to change my fitness.  I want to change my mood.  I want to change my children.  I want to change my life.  Hell, I get paid to change minds.

 

God doesn’t want me to change.  He wants to change me.  Subtle but significant differentiation.  I cannot change.  There isn’t enough willpower in the world for me to change myself.  And there isn’t enough wisdom and articulation in the world to change anyone else.

 

So I must surrender.  I must close my eyes and see myself as God sees me.  Stop moving around, changing my circumstances in an effort to change my mood, my life.  And only in surrender and in seeing myself through God’s eyes can I allow Him to change me.

 

And the paradox grows from there.  God’s change isn’t really a change at all.  He wants me to be me.  He created me with talents, gifts and a spirit that is unique in the universe.  He wants me to be that person instead of the construction of ego and effort that I present to the world.  He wants me to accept myself and my circumstances as they are.  Only then will I be changed.

 

And perhaps it’s only in the belly that I can learn this.  I cannot see.  I cannot move.  God has me right where He needs me to be to change me.

 

Lessons From Insults

I have suffered a number of insults to my understanding of myself this past seven months.  My stroke in late September certainly put a dent in my sense of invulnerability.  The collapse of our revenue in Q4 put another dent in me, this time to my sense of invincibility at work.  My confidence in the basic of goodness of people was seriously bruised by being named in a lawsuit in which my actions were described precisely the opposite of how they occurred.  And Griffin’s death indelibly etched in my soul the impermanence of human life.

I have come to understand the utter futility in wasting time on some construct of self.  When I stand in front of the mirror it is supposed to be God looking back at me.  But my ego has projected so much more on the image.  Being fit, successful at work, good family, nice house, great host, funny guest; all constructs of the ego.  They are the scaffolding in my attempt to remodel a beautiful Craftsman into whatever architecture is the style of the moment.  Which is why the scaffolding never comes down.  The ego is constantly remodeling to fit the circumstances.  Perfect family becomes brave family with child with disability.  Young warrior sales manager becomes sage old general manager.  All constructs of my ego projected on to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and conversations with friends in real life.

The lessons of the past year, in this bruised and beaten child of the most Holy called Sean are these.  To lose myself in the most Holy as I was intended to.  Drop any pretense.  That which will not burn is what is truly of value.  And to stand in front of the mirror and contemplate the wonder of He who created us.

“There was a boy named Sean Shannon and he almost deserved it,” to paraphrase C.S. Lewis.  And like Eustace Scrubb I have fallen asleep in the dragon’s cave.  And these insults can either harden me further as I furiously construct a new façade or they can soften me.  As Aslan says to Eustace, “You must let me undress you.”  I must let God tear away the scales and take down the scaffolding.

As mixed metaphors go, this is the best explanation I have for how to respond to my last, painful seven months.

Wait And Listen

Wait for it.  Hold tight.  Sit silently.  Thoughtless and alone, listening only to your body, your breath.  There God will find you.  The idea of seeking God is a paradox; backwards conceptually.  We don’t find God.  He finds us.  The question is are we willing to be found?

Jeff and Val and Hanna Holtgeerts

Sometimes God finds us in a high school gym when a 6’7” gentle giant named Jeff Holtgeerts wanders up and asks, “What are you doing tonight?”  And you answer, “Nothing.”  And he replies, “We’ll pick you up at seven.  You’re going to Young Life.”

Other times He finds us when we sit alone, broken by life’s disappointments: a broken marriage, a wandering child, financial ruin or simply a dream continually dashed.  And we finally stop fighting.  We drop our act and listen to our body.  Our pain and disappointment have their own sound, their own place in our bones.  We choose to still the inner conversation we’re having about our failures, our unworthiness, our consuming self-contempt.  We choose to sit in the silence of the mind.  And there, having surrendered to circumstances, God appears.  

He has always been there.

Forget Him Not

Three months since Griffin passed away.  The hurt is indescribable.  Tears well even as I write this.  It is beginning to be a struggle not to deny my pain, push it down lest it own me.  I am trying with all my might to hold it in equanimity.

Griffin's 21st Birthday

The choice to deny or be engulfed is nearly instinctual.  And I find myself more often trying to forget.  Forget that Griffin died.  Forget that he won't be there when I get home tonight.  Forget that he won't be riding next to me in the golf cart, smoking a stogie.  Just. Forget. It. All.

But forgetting is tragic. In the forgetting Griffin is lost to me.

I feel I have to find some way to root my pain out of my subconscious so it doesn’t leaven every thought, every conversation, every relationship I have without me being aware.  Better that it be a part of my conscious thinking.  I can examine it, understand it and keep the pain from owning me. 

I must instead own my pain and let it remind me of my great love for Griffin.

Griffin's Favorite Stories, Part One--Tim's Window

Griffin was the most devoted member of our family to the idea of family.  He held all of his cousins dear to his heart and an enormous reservoir of curiosity about both Gretchen and my families and our growing’s up.  At dinner time on those too seldom occasions when we all sat down together at the family table and took the time to simply fellowship, Griffin invariably turned the conversation to stories from my childhood.  He found them hilarious.  Griffin had this stink-eye laugh where his whole face would contort as he would literally cry and sometimes even throw up from the laughter.

So in Griffin’s honor, I share with you over the next several blog posts the stories from my childhood that Griffin loved.

Our house on 143^rd Street in unincorporated Snohomish County (the unincorporated is an important detail as you’ll see) was stocked full with kids we grew up playing with and the characters that raised them.  One such character was our next door neighbor, Bernie.  Bernie ran a rental car franchise in Lynnwood but his dream had always been law enforcement.  He talked about it for the better part of seven or eight years and finally did what most of us don’t do when we near mid-life: he went after his dream.  He went through the auxiliary police academy and became a part time cop on the weekends with the Lynnwood Police Department.

Kelley, Sean, Sheila, John, Tim and Laurie, circa 1984

Bernie’s shift started at 7pm on Saturdays and Sundays, if memory serves.  But Bernie would generally dress for his shift around 4pm just to let the uniform find its fit, like an old pair of shoes.  And he’d walk the street and visit with neighbors in their yards, gardening, his patent leather belt shining, his gun holstered and that beautiful Lynnwood Police Department badge gleaming.  He was a proud member of a proud force.  It was admirable.  But there may have been a little bit of Barney Fife inhabiting Bernie.  Here’s why I think so.

My brother Tim was a high school junior at the time.  Chronologically at least, because he certainly wasn't academically.   Tim had “hobbies” that tended to occupy time he could have been in class or studying.  Tim is by far the smartest of my mother’s children.  He’s got a genius mind for inventing and tinkering.  He was also the most independent of us, spending a few summers working in Alaska in a salmon processing plant.  He was an earner.  He bought his own clothes, bought his own motorcycle and largely took responsibility for himself from the time he entered high school.

From somewhere in middle school and through high school (and maybe even now that it’s legal in Bend, Oregon) Tim enjoyed himself some marijuana. Well, not some.  A lot. And though he was an earner, summer money only went so far when it came to his habit.  Tim also occupied the one room in our house that faced Bernie’s house.  And lo and behold one Saturday there came a knock at our front door.  Well, not a knock.  A police rap.
My mom answered the door.  Bernie stood in the doorway, fully prepped for his shift at 3pm.  A little early for even Bernie.  “Sheila, I need to talk with you.”

“Yes, Bernie?” my mom replied, still annoyed by being interrupted by a police rap on the door.

“Uh, Sheila, we’ve got a problem we need to get addressed today,” Bernie said.

“Okay.”

“Uh, Tim’s got a plant growing in his window.  I think it’s a pot plant.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I’m going to need you to, ah, get it removed and disposed of by the time I leave for my shift.  If you could do that, I’ll turn a blind eye.”

“Bernie, I don’t know what’s growing in Tim’s room. Tim’s room is his private space and if he’s into horticulture then that’s none of your business.  And, besides, Bernie, we don’t live in Lynnwood so I think you’re a little out of your jurisdiction.”
And with that my mother closed the door, walked up the stairs in our split level 70s home and marched straight down the hallway to Tim’s room.  She knocked on the door.  Tim answered, the door open only as much as necessary to conduct a conversation.

“Tim, do you have a pot plant in your window?”

Tim paused as he pondered his reply.  Tim was capable spinning a story and I have seen him lie his way in and out of trouble more times than I can remember.  But he could not lie to our mom.  For whatever reason his moral compass, generally fogged by smoke and clogged by bong resin in most situations, found its true north in the presence of my mom.

“Yeah, I do,” he confessed.

“Tim, why are you growing pot in my house?  And why on God’s green earth would you grow it in the one window in our entire house that faces Bernie’s  house?”

Again, Tim paused and pondered.

“Well, it wasn’t doing well in the closet.”  And he turned, walked to his closet and revealed an elaborate operation with grow lamps and hydroponic equipment.

I’m not sure exactly how it ended, but I do think Vern Willard ended up buying the equipment.  Tim, I’m pretty sure, managed a way to smoke the product.

Paradox

I miss Griffin.  I grieve the loss of him.  My tears come in large part from that place.  But if I am honest I would tell  you that my tears also come from a nagging guilt that I have: I am also relieved.

Raising Griffin as a child was a joyful burden. His disability altered where we lived, what kind of home we could purchase and for a time how much advancement I could make in my career as I felt (we felt) that being close to family in Seattle was important and promotions were in places like, well, Atlanta.  But he was a cute kid in a wheelchair, firecracker sense of humor, as personable as anybody you’ve ever met and a friend to all.  He. Was. Simply. Joy.

Launching Griffin as a young adult was something entirely different.  The arguments, followed by reconciliation and then another argument.  They were always about things that we knew were necessary to be done but that Griffin had control of.  And these things were about the only things he was in control of.  Deep down he knew we were right and wanted to please us but he needed his independence and thus the defiance, the arguments and the reconciliation pattern.

There was the depression, the loneliness, the isolation: all things we also felt with him. Our hearts broke daily for him.  Worst of all, seeing these things somehow made us feel like we had failed as parents.  It sometimes still does.

More than anything we worried for him and ourselves.  “If he can’t acquire the skills, the discipline and the desire to live independently,” the thought went, “what is this going to look like for us over the long term?”

We had spent years altering our vacation plans to accommodate.  Vacations to beaches were a no go when he got big enough that we couldn’t carry him (sand is not good to wheelchairs and 130 pounds of Griffin is not good on the back…ask my neurosurgeon).  Plane trips were a pain as he couldn’t get to the bathroom.  And each time over the past few years that Gretchen and I took a vacation with just the two of us, Griffin would invariably have some incident with his sisters that would result in a fun killing series of phone calls.

So, yes, I feel relief just as I grieve him and the loss of him.  A paradox only God can make sense of, and that I am called to hold in a balance.   My hope is that my vulnerability opens space for God to fill with his power and grace.  This is what I am understanding to be whole, to be holy.