Good Grief, Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown and the rest of the characters from Peanuts were always my favorite growing up.  Each week I remember reading the comic strip in the Sunday paper with my dad.  I also remember waiting with anticipation for the holiday specials to appear on TV. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas really were not complete until Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Linus and Lucy kicked it off.  

Charlie Brown's catch phrase was "Good Grief."  And lately I have wondered why Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts, chose those two words.  Grief has a negative connotation, so isn't "good grief" an oxymoron?  How can grief possibly be good?

I would never presume to know the exact journey of loss that others have been through.  I believe each experience to be as unique as each individual who goes through it and each occurrence that causes the grief in the first place.  But I have to think that grief has similar characteristics though maybe takes on different intensities and forms.

According to Merriam Webster, grief is defined as: 1. a deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement; 2. an unfortunate outcome.

Well, duh.  A great big colossal ginormous and resounding DUH!  Because those definitions, while technically accurate, do not come close to the true and complicated meaning of grief.  And I know, because I live and breathe this every day.

I have always loved the beach.  There is something amazing about walking on the sand with the water lapping at your feet and seeing an intricate and vast quilt of blue and green hues that seemingly goes on forever.  The ocean itself, in truth, frightens me.  Though it is a majestic, beautiful example of nature at its finest, it is also dark and mysterious.  The ocean brings light and life, yet it also brings darkness and death.  It is to be revered but also respected.

I have used the ocean in the past to describe what grief feels like.  For me, grief is like standing on the beach with my back to the ocean.  I am standing right at the point where the water meets the shore, typically lingers for a moment and rushes back out again.  If I tune out all distractions and close my eyes, I can hear each wave as it washes up on the beach and then washes out again in a natural and constant rhythm.

My feet are wet from the constant ebb and flow of the waves. My bare heels remain in standing water at all times though my toes go from being free in the damp sand to being immersed.  The ocean seems sometimes lazy and passive while at other times it seems insistent  and probing.  Sometimes it seems angry and relentless.  The rhythm may be slow or it may be frantic.  But regardless of the pace or frequency, the waves are constant.

While I can anticipate the regular pace of the waves, because my back is to the water I cannot see a wave until it hits the shore.  And if I cannot see the wave, then I have no opportunity to prepare for its arrival or its size.  The wave may be slight and gone almost as quickly as it arrived.  Or the wave may hit me unaware and with great force.  The wave may cause me to shift my weight from one foot to the other, recovering quickly.  Instead the wave may cause me to lose my balance and become uneasy on my feet.  Or the wave may completely overtake me and knock me down.  I may be able to recover and jump right back on my feet.  Or recovery may take only moments. Or hours. Or days.  Maybe even years.  I am fourteen months in so I do not know for sure. 

When you lose someone close to you, grief sweeps in.  It arrives like an uninvited guest to your party.  Grief begins as an unwelcome companion, an imposition, a roommate who is not of your choosing and with whom you have nothing in common.  Grief is irritating and frustrating and constant and you would give anything to make it go away.  But eventually you come to accept grief because you recognize that it is not going to go away anytime soon.  

Grief changes you.  That person you were before becomes a memory, a former version of yourself that you only partly recognize.  Grief creates a continual stream of thoughts and assessment of your actions, inactions and words.  It may be while you are in the shower or in the car driving back and forth to work.  Thoughts may come when you are trying to fall asleep or as you lie wide awake in the middle of the night.  Certain words or songs or people or places bring reminders of the past.  Sometimes those thoughts and memories arrive like old friends.  And at other times those thoughts and memories assault you, leaving you reeling and asking why.  

I became a widow fourteen months ago.  The ocean waves that knocked me down over and over at first do not hit so often now.  The water is much more calm but my feet will probably always be a little bit wet.  The difference is that I have learned to expect the waves and my feet are solidly planted when each wave hits.    

Grief has become my constant companion like a piece of clothing or an accessory that I wear.  Sometimes the grief is visible to others and try as I might there is nothing I can do to hide it or push it away.  At other times, these days most of the time, I may feel and appear more like my normal self.  People may think I am over my loss, but I live with it every second and it has redefined who I am.

From grief, I have learned many lessons.  Chief among them how fleeting and precious life is, how resilience may be defined, how the things we view as important are not actually important at all and the meaning of true love.  It just took the most awful experience of my life to completely enlighten me.  

So, maybe grief IS good, after all.  And maybe Charlie Brown is a whole lot smarter than the Peanuts gang gave him credit for.    

One of my close friends forwarded me a web link that came from the online publication Reddit. A  grieving person posted, "My friend just died.  I don't know what to do."  The following is the response that person received from someone only identified as G. Snow. Looks like G. Snow and I have a few things in common.  And perspective is everything.

“Alright, here goes. I'm old. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not. I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see.

As for grief, you'll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you're drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it's some physical thing. Maybe it's a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it's a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don't even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you'll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what's going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything...and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it's different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O'Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you'll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don't really want them to. But you learn that you'll survive them. And other waves will come. And you'll survive them too. If you're lucky, you'll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Along Came a Spider Who Sat Down Beside Her

Have you ever wondered how certain words came to be?  Who looked at a desk, for example, and decided to name it that?  Or a road?  Or a tree?  Or a widow?

The word widow makes me think of spiders, specifically black widows.  Black widows are among the most feared spiders because their bite can be harmful, even fatal.  According to Google, a black widow's venom is fifteen times stronger than that of a rattlesnake.  This from an invertebrate being roughly the size of a paper clip, weighing less than an ounce and with a life span of one to three years.  Black widows also have a violent mating ritual once a year that often ends in the death of the male spider.    

There are only a few things in life that I do not like.  Beets are at the top of the list, followed by people who are unkind but I also do not like snakes or mice or spiders.  Ironic, then, that I have had a label placed on me that reminds me of something I dislike so much.  

I have known widows in the past.  However, I always knew them as ladies in their 70s or 80s who lost a husband to illness after being married for many decades.  My own grandmother for one. She was 77 when my grandfather died but she lived to be almost 94. Up until her passing, she lived on the farm in the house she was born in, the same house where four of her five children were also born, the same house her husband died in.  My grandmother was an incredibly strong woman.  But I now understand you have to be to strong to survive the death of your spouse.  Honestly, to not only survive the event itself but to figure out how to adapt your life and keep going takes great courage and strength.  I am tougher than I realized.  Every widow must find strength they previously did not know they possessed.

The word widow is translated from the Hebrew word almana, meaning 'empty house,' that appears 56 times in the Old Testament of the Bible.  The term in Old English was widewe, from an Indo-European root meaning to ‘be empty’. A similar word in Sanskrit meant to ‘be destitute,' and the Latin vidua meant ‘bereft' or 'deprived.' The modern English word void is derived from the Latin vidua.  Yep, those all sound about right.

Did you know that there is something called the "widowhood effect?"  It seems that a woman whose husband has died has a much greater mortality likelihood, especially in the first three months following the death.  That is why you hear of married couples who live to a great age and die within days or hours or minutes of each other.  The thought of being without their partner, best friend and better half can simply be too much to bear.  I can understand how it would be so much easier to curl up and will yourself to die, too.  But no one ever promised us that life would be easy.

In past centuries it was customary in parts of Europe for a widow to wear only black for the remainder of their lives.  In the Hindu religion, the act of sati is still sometimes practiced even today.  It refers to a widow being burned, either voluntarily or by force, often on her husband's funeral pyre.  Some Hindus believe this practice to be the ultimate form of womanly devotion and sacrifice.  If not consumed by the sati practice, the Hindu culture in some areas required a widow's head to be shaved, she was forbidden to wear jewelry and she was forced to walk barefoot. 

When a death occurred during the Civil War, people believed that time stood still and thus pendulums were stopped on clocks at the hour of the person's passing.  The front door of a home was draped in heavy black fabric.  Anything shiny or reflective inside the home, such as a mirror, would be covered in the same fabric.  It was also customary for a widow to follow a very specific set of rules.  Women had to be clothed in "widow's weeds" within 24 hours of her husband's death.  This consisted of all black clothing.  When in public, the garb included black gloves and a veil to cover the face.  Widows were required to be in mourning for no less than two years.  In some locations it was customary for the widow to not leave her home and any sort of social interaction was forbidden.  Interestingly, though, a widower was only required to be in mourning for three months time.

Throughout history, women have taken a backseat versus the role of men.  Though not much is known about the role of women in the Stone Age, it is believed that women primarily held the role of gatherer and nurturer, with men serving as the hunter and protector.  In Ancient Egypt, women were in fact considered equals to men except with regard to occupation. During the Middle Ages, women were generally considered inferior to men and their role primarily involved domestic duties.  If you do your homework you will find that there were some pretty bad ass women warriors and leaders throughout history but they were definitely in the minority.  It was only in modern times during the 20th century that women began to gain more rights, including the right to vote in the U.S. in 1920.  But even in the contemporary times of today, with nearly 50% of women in the work force and more women enrolled in college than men, with women having a longer average lifespan than men, women continue to serve as the lesser or inferior gender.

Also throughout history, women being widowed bucked the norm of society.  With men serving as the primary provider and protector and women not being an accepted part of the work force until more recent times, what happened when a woman lost her husband to illness, war or an accident?  Often she became impoverished, her children were considered orphans, and they became reliant on the generosity of other family members or the church or the government.  A woman's life could change for the worst in an instant and yet because of her lack of rights and accepted societal conventions, she often was thrown into a life of hardship, sacrifice and sometimes shame and stigma.

So here is something to consider.  Women have historically had to endure a lot.  But after a woman has suffered such profound pain and loss at the death of her husband, why was it characteristic of society and accepted for centuries to further humiliate her?  Crazy when you think about it, right?  And I have thought about it a lot.

I have the best job in the world.  It is challenging and sometimes discouraging but it is also fulfilling and inspiring and amazing, too.  As executive director of The Food Bank for Central & Northeast Missouri, I get to make a difference in people's lives on a daily basis. Our team offers nourishment and hope to the individuals, children, families, seniors and veterans who need it most.  Most of the households we serve have at least one employed adult in them. Many of the people we serve are single parents who are underemployed and at the end of the month they just cannot make ends meet.  

Think about your own monthly budget.  You have those fixed costs including a mortgage payment or rent, utilities, childcare, medical and pharmaceutical costs and transportation costs.  If you do not make the payment for one of these costs then there is a negative trade-off.  In your own monthly budget, where is the one area that you can compress your spending depending on what you have left?  It is the amount you spend on food.  And that is why The Food Bank serves over 100,000 people every month and distributes 30 million pounds of food annually in 32 counties.  Because hunger is real and it is all around us.

It is not lost on me that when Anthony died my circumstances could have been very different.  Had we not saved money, had I been a stay at home mom who suddenly lost all income, had we had any debt, etc.  The list of what-ifs goes on and on.  I could instantly have found myself in need.  I could have been one of the people we serve each day.  I am so fortunate that I was not one of these people and I did have some safety nets in place but I am likely the exception, rather than the rule.  

Exactly 406 days ago a spider came along and sat down beside me.  I hate that spider but I sure have learned a lot from it.  Maybe those nursery rhymes were more insightful than we understood in our youth.  And, maybe we really do learn all we need to know of life in kindergarten.

Little Miss Muffet sat on her tuffet
Eating her curds and whey
When along came a spider who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

- Mother Goose

“The leaves let go, the seeds let go, and I must let go sometimes, too, and cast my lot with another of nature’s imperfect but tenacious survivors.” 

- Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

With artistic credits to my creative and talented Ben!  Love you to the moon and back!