Twenty-Nine

I am writing this on the eve of our surviving son Ryan’s twenty-ninth birthday, a summer solstice baby, born on Father’s Day. Days with our children are not a given, each breath they take is a gift.

These last ten months we have been roommates, Ryan moved back home to accept a job in Northern Virginia. I see many articles about millennials moving home and how to juggle the relationships, I don’t read them. I have never felt like Ryan is a child returning home, he is a capable, intelligent adult investing in a career opportunity and we are house sharing as he explores his options.

Our surviving son has lived all over the country, served his country in the military, been on his own since he was eighteen. This is the most we have seen each other in over ten years; five of those years spent as a family in deep mourning following the catastrophic loss of Justin, our eldest son, and Ryan’s only sibling. Everything changed. Not one of us is the same person we were five years ago, we each continue to experience profound and radical changes as we live out this existence of child and sibling loss. Justin’s death was a single moment, living the loss is a lifetime of moments without him.

Justin’s death was a single moment, living the loss is a lifetime of moments without him.

These are days of challenging and intense conversations in the kitchen. Hours of entering into dialogue about painful parenting mistakes and behaviors I wish I could snatch back and change. I stood in awe at the courage of my son to engage me in conversation not knowing where it would go or how I would react. He dared greatly and people only dare greatly when they care greatly and are seeking truth and knowledge.

I fought the urge to to armor up and defend my parenting, I implemented the lessons learned from Brene Brown in “Rising Strong,” and allowed myself to be vulnerable and a listener. I felt shame and embarrassment at my past choices and I made space for them. I dug down, unpacking long believed suppositions and held them up to the blinding light of new perspectives and felt the cold wash of recognizing that what I had been taught about parenting was wrong.

I immersed myself in the work that came in a weekly packet from Brene Brown. I lived with the parade of memories that broke free of fetters and lunged across my heart and soul. I spent hours face down in the arena choking on the mud and spit of regret. Regret is a fair and honest teacher, and examining those lessons provoke change and opportunities to to live wiser.

We continue to exchange thoughts over coffee at odd hours. I mentioned to Ryan that I was grateful that we had this fresh start. He surprised me in responding that he didn’t believe in fresh or new starts. And damn, if the boy isn’t right. I came across this quote from Brene:

“The irony is that we attempt to disown our difficult stories to appear more whole or more acceptable, but our wholeness – even our wholeheartedness – actually depends on the integration of all our experiences, including the fall.”  Brene Brown, LLC  Courage Works

Integration, a word I know from grief work. We integrate Justin’s death and the subsequent grief and mourning into the fabric of our lives, we can’t start fresh from his death. A fresh start means leaving the good behind, the joy and laughter, the inside family jokes, for good or bad, we need to embrace the whole of us. The same with the lived experience of parenting, we don’t get a fresh start, we integrate the whole of our journey and embrace the falls. We learn how to rise strong.

As I write this, I see where this interior cleansing and renewal has led to exterior actions and rebuilding. We have needed major home repairs for years, between unemployment, underemployment, and Justin’s death, home repairs were not on the agenda. Ryan has brought an energy into the house that has inspired us make a dream list of projects and hire a contractor to make them real. It is scary to spend money, but scarier to let the house fall down around us.

We have a dumpster arriving, for me that is a holy and sacramental occasion, an exterior action of an interior grace. I do love to throw stuff out and nothing makes me happier than to have others join in the cleansing. The cleansing is not of our old life to make a fresh start, but making space for new adventures and new memories. We save the pieces of our old foundation and create beauty from brokenness. If you have never rented a dumpster, do it, it is life-changing.

When we face our stories, our shame and darkness, we get to tell our story, we get to write the ending. I marvel that this revolution has come in peace, no one armored up, there was no call to arms. We shook out the tapestry of our lives and looked at it with candid eyes, now we can catch loose threads and weave them back into our story.

We wish you the merriest and happiest of birthdays Ryan! Thank you for wading into the rough surf of life with us, many will stand with you when the sea is calm, but only a few will venture out when the waves are roaring and relentless. Thank you for your curiosity and courage.

Here is to many more birthdays and cake. Here is to making new memories and more long talks. Thanks for not giving up on us.