As my son lay dying, I told myself stories about how he would recover and things would get better again. A rescue helicopter would arrive just in time, or we would get him to an ambulance and the paramedics would save him. In my mind there was no question about his survival — of course he wouldn’t die. My desperate, necessary hope for his recovery qualified the stories I told myself; there would have been no way for me to cope with what was happening, otherwise.
Everyone around me was doing exactly what they needed to do to cope with the situation; this was enough to buoy my hope and the stories that attended it. He would wake up and splutter a cough, or perhaps let out a little cry. We would hear a rasp of breath and our son would summon up the strength he needed to survive. A miracle would happen and we would be spared our grief. The stories kept coming as the situation grew more and more desperate.
Between the stories that flicked frame by frame through my mind, there was an emptiness that prevailed and lasted. A clarity of understanding emerged that everything was okay, even the manifestation of my darkest and most painful fears. I recognised that what I had feared most was finally happening, and that there was no longer any need to feel afraid. The terrible power of the experience required total, unmediated presence of mind.
There came a point when a grave new feeling began to emerge through my body in the region of the navel, as though the invisible bond between me and my baby were severing. It was perceptible, literally a gut-wrenching sensation: the body, in its wisdom, was able to accept what the mind could not yet fathom. Raphael was leaving the body, the precious infant body that I had nurtured, had laboured over, had grown within me. It was a torturous, excruciating moment.
The attempt at resuscitation was still going on as I experienced this. Nonetheless, I could in no way stifle the primal howl of anguish that escaped my throat and bent me over beside his lifeless body, as though having received a mortal blow in my abdomen. The pain of that severance was all-encompassing, and yet the clarity of consciousness remained — the wisdom of knowing that the pain was merely transitory. The body was passing through that pain: there was awareness of the pain, placing me outside of the direct experience of it.
A fragment of prayer — Thy Will Be Done — burst forth as my heart exploded in tragic radiance. I knew he was gone, then; and yet I knew he was with us. The simultaneous awareness of his loss and his perpetuity were more real to me, at that moment, than the attempt we were making to save him; but the nurse (via phone link) and his father continued the effort of resuscitation. They had not felt what I had, and it was necessary for them to keep hoping, to keep trying.
Still, the stories of his miraculous recovery — even from death — continued to play out in my mind. I could trick my body into feeling the palpable relief of phew, that was close, because death was not supposed to touch me. Won’t life pull us out of this, somehow? Don’t we always emerge unscathed from intense scenarios? The mind, unable to bear the trauma as it is happening, creates alternative realities to buffer the shock of the experience. Through storytelling, I was spared from living out the depth of anguish that would come at the moment of accepting his death.
Acceptance came. Anguish and despair came with it. Grief, in all of its harrowing hues, began to wash over us; our bodies became vessels for the unhindered flow of agony and affliction. Everything burned away: the stories of our lives, our values and aspirations, were destroyed in a moment by the violence of that grief, like a city burst into flames. I became nothing; the ‘me’ and ‘us’ of yesterday were lost irremediably. The world was unbuffered, unfiltered, raw in the realness of the pain of our son’s death. Our vulnerability became unmasked and we felt abandoned, frail, powerless before the enormity of bereavement.
And yet, I must tell you this: the world was wondrous that day, more beautiful than ever I had seen it. The humble planet we live upon and call our home had never appeared so radiant before my eyes. Never before had I seen the sunlight sparkling so splendidly on the brilliant azure of the ocean as that morning. Never before had I seen the individual leaves of the forest canopy dance with such grace, as if choreographed, when we drove back along the trail that morning. Never before had I felt as intensely alive, confronted with the reality of death, as that morning. A new story had begun.
Storytelling is healing. To share a story is to unburden oneself of it; it is told as an offering to the the listener or reader, and it becomes their gift. I am part of your story when I recognise your highs and lows, your laughter and tears, your bliss and misery, your pain and joy, as my own. My story becomes part of you when you remember it when you need it most. Great stories bring us into the variegated garden of human emotions, in which the flowers of compassion and empathy grow from the roots of shared experience.
Stories we share as communities bring about our sense of culture and identity; stories we share with our children help to establish the parameters of self and world; stories we tell ourselves contribute both to our suffering and our freedom from suffering. All the stories that I have been sharing on this platform are offered to affirm the truth of healing, recovery, and awakening as irrefutable facts of life. The stories I share are both mine and ours.
I have already shared about the trauma and grief of early bereavement. Over time the intense grief has receded, and yet its passing exposes the concealed shame in the interstices of this unfathomable loss: a nagging certainty that I have failed as a mother because my child has died. I blame myself for not preventing his death, for not knowing what I could have done to save him, for not having done enough. I deserve this misery, I tell myself; I must have made it happen, it is my own fault.
Several stories are being voiced simultaneously within consciousness — some that contribute to my ongoing suffering, some that affirm a viewpoint of the world as essentially benign and blameless for my suffering, and some that awaken me to the perception of all phenomena as intrinsically perfect (including my suffering).
In some stories I cast myself as the victim of bereavement. I tell myself that Raphie’s death was a tragedy from which I can never recover, and then the world around me becomes a cruel place: without hope, I despair; in despair, I blame myself and others for what happened. In this way I reify the positions of shame, and turn them into a story that disconnects me from the world. I enact and embody this story and use it to punish myself or those around me. I inflict the shame upon the world, and create my hell around me.
When I tell myself the story that Raphie is deathless, then the context shifts: if Raphie is deathless, then so too am I, so where is this pain coming from and who is experiencing it? This is only a story I tell myself and not the truth of liberation; nonetheless, it allows me to recognise the pain as transitory and to allow it to pass. In this story, I forgive myself, surrendering the positions of shame in order to heal and recover. I remember how to connect with the world, how to sustain the promise of love through the pain of bereavement.
When there is nobody to blame for my pain, not even myself, then I am relieved from the burden of being right or wrong. When there is no death anyway, and we are living out illusions that we take to be real, then is Raphie not here with me, even as I write these words? I summon up the prayer that supports this work. I question the stories, and they question me right back; I thought I was the one telling stories, but the deeper I look inside the more I see them arising from a void. The stories are telling me.
So let this story be about recovery, and let it be told as a journey through a wild place that we are taking together, you and I. We negotiate its sloughs and desolate places, attempting the pitiless peaks that emerge on the pathway in pursuit of glittering vistas and fresh horizons: it is a story; it is all a story, and how we tell it to ourselves determines where we go with it — will we awaken, or will we die trying?
My recovery — from trauma, despair, bereavement — is ultimately not my own. I make the story up as I am going along, not assuming the promised destination is a real place, but rather that the experience I create for myself is the recovery. My pain is perfect; it is the perfect experience of pain. My life is perfect: it is the perfect experience of life. My bereavement is perfect: it is the perfect experience of bereavement. Now I have shared it with you, and it is ours.
I can tell you this: Raphie was perfect; his life was perfect, and the love we shared was perfect. The short span of his lifetime awakened a presence of love that transforms me, and continues to transform our family as our recovery proceeds in the wake of bereavement. We are a tree from which a limb has been violently severed, scarred by loss yet growing whole regardless. And I have lived to tell this tale; for that, perforce, I am truly grateful.
Thank you for reading. Working on this newsletter has been a solace to me. If you have been moved by this piece, please share it with your friends and community. Comments are open for reflection posts.
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Thank you for your openness. You are incredibly brave! The way you describe your internal struggle so vividly is just beautiful. And, again, I am so sorry for your loss.
Everytime you talk about baby Raphael I feel a raw ache and anguish in my heart, and yet I can see the blazing light that is guiding you through the dark. He was truly one of your most intimate and essential teachers Nicola. And through you he is ours too. ❤️
I see you Nicola, this is ours now. In this way Raphael is deathless, for you and through your stories, for us too.
I'm crying while writing this, all the more power, love and healing to you my dear Nicola.