Remembrance

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Denial, with all its cold, numb detachment, naturally came first — and it hung around for weeks.

While I intellectually understood that my great aunt had passed away in the wee hours of July 21, and we’d all more or less braced ourselves for that awful news since she entered hospice care, getting the call from 800 miles away seemed to trigger an old protective reflex: The truth can’t hurt me if I refuse to let it sink in!

(That’s, like, the primary coping tool for addicts, who learn to perform all sorts of complicated mental/verbal gymnastics to avoid acknowledging the obvious fact that their drug/alcohol problem is THE thing that’s driving them to destruction.)

Distance had shielded me from reality, as it pertains to my family, for my entire adult life. Moving away from my childhood home in my early 20s allowed me to keep my Aunt Mickey, my parents, all my caregivers and role models, cemented in my head as they were in my youth.

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As the years rolled by, taking me on a zig-zaggy path to my personal hell and back, I anchored myself with an enduring image of “Auntie Mick”: a sharp, vivacious dynamo, cheering from the softball sidelines or holding court at the dinner table. She remained an unshakable pillar of my family unit and colorful main character in my life story, even as her 90th birthday passed and her health declined.

They held a low-key burial in Chicago a few days after her death, and it wasn’t until Aug. 8, when my husband and I flew in from Philly for her memorial service, that the fog finally lifted and I felt the blow land. This larger-than-life lady who helped raise me wasn’t just absent from my immediate environment…she was gone from this world.

The emotions rushed in as I entered my childhood church, clutching a printout of my prepared speech in one sweaty paw, while the other held a wad of snotty tissue. I poured every ounce of positive energy I had into delivering my tribute — Auntie Mick’s feisty spirit must have been with me, pushing the “Words of Remembrance” straight from heart to mouth 🙏🏻 — then deflated like a pierced balloon.

I’ve been tangled up in a jumble of Depression, Anger and Acceptance ever since.

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Everything felt heavy the morning after the memorial, from a laborious jog around the old neighborhood through soupy morning air that left me soaked to the bone with sweat, to an impromptu gathering with my sisters and their kids at Aunt Mickey’s house.

We’d been asked to sort through her belongings, identifying our desired inheritance, but no tchotchkes, old clothes, good china, furniture, fitness equipment or family jewels could fill the emptiness that engulfed me in that memory-filled space. All I could do was plop myself on the couch in the living room and survey the surreal scene.

Sitting in the spot where I’d gleefully unwrapped presents, listened to stories and sipped homemade cider on Christmas Eves past, amid framed pictures of us as kids, teens, brides, parents, and handmade crafts by my nieces and nephew, I ached for all the time we could never rewind. I craved comfort, escape, to go back to a place where I felt safe and assured and life seemed infinite and indestructible.

My anxious, fearful (and self-centered) inner child had hijacked my emotions, driving my thoughts to a familiar, dark place. It would be nice, my monkey brain blurted, if we could go get drunk!

Is that a form of “Bargaining,” offering up your soul to the devil in exchange for pain relief? Trading your long-term peace for short-term oblivion? Or is that just garden variety addict behavior, and I need to brush up on my Kübler-Ross before attempting to take the National Counseling Exam this fall? 🤔

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We did plan an “escape” from divvying up Auntie Mick’s estate, heading from her house to a local movie theater for what seemed like mindless fun. Still, I sat there weeping in my 60-ounce soda cup through half of “Haunted Mansion,” a hokey Disney reboot involving Danny freaking DeVito. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Couldn’t help it! I identified with the painfully earnest, quirkily-dressed, sweet little boy who feels like a square peg who will never belong. Overwhelmed by grief and tired of trying to act “normal” to fit in with his peers, he’s so lost and alone in the world that the afterlife starts to look like an attractive option. “I hate it here!” he yells, gesturing at everything; he’s ready to give in and check out.

I wiped my puffy eyes with snack bar napkins, thinking, I know how he feels. 😭

Grief, like the classic park attraction Disney keeps milking for cash, can be an unpredictable, scary ride. But the mature adult/professional therapist I’ve been straining to become these past four years is much better equipped to sit with/push past pain. I’ve learned the hard way that nothing we drink, snort, shoot, smoke, chase, buy, or lust after will ever save us from our suffering. As some other psych scholar I probably should be able to name put it, “The only way out is through.”

Accepting that challenge every day is the key to a full recovery, and hopefully, a life you can look back on with pride. You don’t choose to get sober if you don’t value life, and you certainly don’t honor a loved one who lived her 90 years to the fullest by surrendering to your demons when the going gets tough.

So, push on with the business of living I must do, even when circumstances are unpleasant and the road toward the light seems torturously long.

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The plane delivering us back to Philly last Thursday seemed strangely in tune with the turbulence I was feeling inside. We jerked and jostled to the ground in the middle of a thunderstorm — touching down, as the calendar informed me, while my time-of-the-month hormones were ramping up 🙄 — and instead of disembarking with “closure,” or the serenity of acceptance after saying goodbye to my beloved great aunt, I was one big triggered, exposed raw nerve.

Going back to work did not make things better.

Giving yourself to others who don’t always want your help or respect your efforts is difficult on a good day. My job can seem truly impossible when I’m struggling with my own mental health. I marvel at how Aunt Mickey, a long-time phys. Ed. teacher who made a living dealing with kids 😱, balanced toughness and love so masterfully at school and with family. I wonder if I’ll reach my final days with as much to remember and celebrate, or if the weighty demands of a sober life in a helping profession will (at worst) prove too heavy or (at best) hold me back.

But if I learned anything from my first 1,500 days in recovery — and the plot of “Haunted Mansion” 😉— it’s that facing that awful, painful suffering you’d much rather deny or escape sets your authentic self free to serve your true purpose. And, call me hokey, but with Auntie Mick taking her fierce personality to the spirit world, I feel like the higher power helping to carry me just got a lot more powerful.