Category Archives: Grief and Loss

Always a Father

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Death affects people in  various ways. If you are a parent, where does the role you’ve occupied for more than three decades go? Are you still a father (or a mother)?

Last year on Father’s Day, we drove down to Providence and retraced the beginning of Mark’s walk when he left his house on Pleasant Street, setting out on what would be his final walk. A friend of his, James, helped us figure out the steps Mark took as he left his beloved city. A small group of friends and co-workers walked out to a point on the city’s bike walking trail and turned back. We walked nearly 11 miles.

Mark, in addition to being an award-winning poet, activist, and a one-in-a-million son, also collected geography, while passing through places in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania. He reached Zanesville in Ohio. He got on a bus. He’d concocted a plan designed to subvert the coming of winter and what that meant to his bare feet. It was the only way he could come up with for continuing to walk. It seemed like a brilliant idea. Hell, it was a brilliant idea!. How could he know that the Greyhound was taking him south was actually transporting him closer to something dark and tragic waiting for him in Florida’s Panhandle? Continue reading →

No Imagination

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At some point, you simply give up on (some) people. I’m talking about the ones who regularly offer up the most perfunctory responses response to me (or Mary) when they learn about Mark’s story and how our 33-year-old son was killed. How many times am I going to have to hear “I can’t imagine”?

Americans are nothing if not superficial. If they are able to muster a shred of empathy and support during a tough patch, they rarely are capable of sustaining it for long. We’re a country where sliding glibly over the horrific and returning to our happy, positive thoughts is akin to taking a drug. Of course, speaking of drugs, there’s a pharmaceutical for everything, especially ones designed to numb any pain. Then, did you see this? Apparently, psychedelics are a thing again.

I never liked reading or hearing about the death of a son or daughter, preceding their parents. Being a father, I never had difficulty summoning empathy for them. I simply imagined how I’d likely feel if I ended up in their shoes. I’m wearing them now and it hurts worse than I imagined it would. Continue reading →

Never Far Away

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Life goes on. At least that’s what they tell us. Actually, by repeating the phrase back at other people, it helps make them feel better about you that you are feeling better—but you’re not. You’re just moving with the flow, swept up in the momentum of life moving forward.

In the fall, I found out a private school nearby needed people to come in at night and help some of their students during a time slot called “guided study.” I told the director a bit of my story and how I would try to make it through the first week, but that there were “no promises.” I did. And then, I made it through the next week, and the week after that. We are now in the month when the students I’ve met across weeks numbering in the 30s are looking forward to the end of the trimester and going home. I did better than I thought I would.

Maybe the reason I managed to do the “life going on” dance had to do with a young man I met my second week of tutoring. He needed help with his statistics assignment. I hadn’t done statistics in decades, especially statistical word problems that required solutions relevant to terms like median, standard deviation, mode, and variance. I had to draw “pictures” to figure them out. He said to me, “why are you drawing pictures?” We both learned that he was visual and this offered us a window into understanding his learning style.

The next night, I was asked if I wanted to work with him one-on-one. I said I’d give it a shot. We’ve been meeting four nights a week (and Sunday nights, too) since late September. I’ve learned that he likes order and routine. I’ve tried to create that five nights a week.

My days are spent working on other things. I’m writing a book. A week ago, I drove to Waterville and then, Oakland, and offered a new seminar I’ve developed, The ABCs of Medicare. I began my week by sending out another newsletter for the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund. Yes, life goes on. But you are never far away.

Springtime has dawdled this year, taking its sweet time getting here. Those of us who live in the Northeast have learned patience with the seasons—those who haven’t must contend with their constant carping (that does nothing to speed along seasonal change). At the very least, they’re always going to be disappointed. I’ve learned that life can be disappointing. Grief and loss are excellent instructors.

Spring is also a time of year that reminds me of all the previous beginnings of baseball dating back to the time when I was probably five or six and learning that baseball seasons all have starting points. These always correspond with spring’s arrival.

These (spring) memories are never far away.

Continue reading →

What’s Your EQ?

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From time-to-time, I’ll review blog topics I’ve brushed up against. Partly, I do this to ensure I don’t duplicate posts or topics (except posts about topics that I think need to be highlighted).

What surprised me was that while I’ve been thinking (and talking) about the topic of “emotional intelligence” a lot lately, I only have one post with that tag. That one was written last March, and only briefly touched on the topic. I mentioned it after I came across an (obscure) book written about the grief and loss associated with losing an adult child.

One thing that is all-too-clear to me is that we are being affected by leaders deficient in this crucial capability. And if you haven’t experienced the fallout yet, I’m sure you will at some point in the future, rest assured.

Mark cultivated the traits of an emotionally healthy, attuned adult. What are these?

According to The Dictionary of Psychology, written by Andrew Colman, he posits that emotional intelligence (EQ) is characterized by the “capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one’s goal(s).” Continue reading →

Grief in the Light

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While it’s okay to talk about trivial matters—food, beer, and what restaurants we like; songs and bands; maybe why Tom Brady is better than Ben Roethlisberger—some argue, we mustn’t discuss the weightier issues confronting us—like death and the attendant fall-out from grief and loss.

There was a tacit understanding when I was coming up that certain topics were notably off-limits in mixed company—the old adage, always refrain from “politics and religion.”

Apparently that’s not the case any longer. Political thoughts are offered with little regard to how well-framed and supported they are by logic or fact. Then, there is no shortage of those ready to offer (inflict?) prayers on your behalf (even if they never seem to be “answered”). So, the old taboos no longer apply—unless it’s talking about death and the subsequent way it affects the lives of those left behind. At least that’s how it seems to me, more than a year out from the event that changed the lives of Mary and me.

A few weeks ago, I heard a track on Jeffrey Davison’s Saturday morning “Shrunken Planet” program on WFMU. It was by a band listed on the playlist as Bipolar Explorer. Something about the song, “Lost Life,” was evocative and then Davison mentioned how the album where he pulled the cut from, was a reflection on the death of their singer, Summer Serafin.

The band has the requisite page on Bandcamp and they’re on Wikipedia. I found additional information about them and Summer. She was a beautiful and talented actress who died all-too-young. Her band mate and love of her life, Michael, has soldiered on, making music that recognizes how grief and loss leaves those who loved the person who is gone, forever affected (and afflicted). It’s about death and what follows for those left behind, yet, I don’t find the music of Bipolar Explorer morbid, or in any way, shape, or form. In fact, I ordered “Sometimes in Dreams,” and it is a haunting and profound exploration of lost love in musical form.

Continue reading →

Letter From a Dad

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There is a website called Chicks on the Right, founded by two conservative women, Amy Jo Clark and Miriam Weaver. The site is similar to many that promote only one side of the spectrum, politically and ideologically. I don’t really care about that.

What I do care about is that earlier in the week, while doing a Google search about Mark and something I was thinking about, I came upon this post, first. The writer, someone writing under the pseudonym of “Miss CJ,” called my late son a “hippie moron.” Then, in trying to get back to the post, I discovered this one.

Can you imagine missing your son each and every day, and then reading someone saying she wasn’t even sorry about his death, even going as far as to gloat about it? This is the kind of hater BS that makes me angry and close to being crazy. You never stop loving your son and wanting to protect him, even after he’s been killed.

I thought I’d write today’s post in the form of letter to the two founders, appealing to their compassion and empathy, and perhaps, their “better angels.” But this is likely an exercise in futility, akin to reasoning with the unreasonable. Continue reading →

The Myth of Control

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Apparently, there are prescribed ways to grieve. Not too public, because while we can share our thoughts about food, music, or the perfectly ordered life we all lead (sarcasm) on our blogs and via our social media feeds, I guess grief and loss are off limits.

That’s an interesting approach in terms of being transparent and “real.” Only sharing the good, but never touching on the tough times. Life’s a cakewalk when everything is going great. But if you write about your life, then why stop when things turn to shit? Something worth considering, I think.

A writer none other than iconic Joan Didion wrote in The Year of Magical Thinking, “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.” Didion’s book is masterful, bringing her unflagging skills as a journalist to what at times feels like her, “reporting out” on grief, while also passing through the experience, personally, after the sudden (and unexpected) death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, in 2003. Continue reading →

What Does It All Mean?

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Life now has a definitive before and after. What existed prior to tragedy is now gone—not in the sense that all of it’s disappeared entirely—but threads connecting me to that time have been forever altered.

If you are not familiar with passages through the dark, you probably won’t understand. That’s okay. All of us will at some point lose someone we love, though. All loss isn’t the same, either. Therese Rando posits that sudden, unanticipated death leaves those left behind traumatized due primarily from the psychological assault brought on by a death like Mark’s.

I continually run into people who don’t know my story. Why should they? It’s not like I’m hosting a reality TV program or anything. Of course, being the self-oriented people that we are, it’s easy to assume that everyone knows that my son was killed and expect them to acknowledge it. What’s interesting to me after slightly more than a year of acting out a common scene, is how people do react when they do find out. It runs the gamut from basically not acknowledging it (sort of like “oh,” and then moving on), offering some version of the platitude,” I’m sorry for your loss,” and then, there are those who engage with you in a human and empathetic fashion. This group is the smallest one. Continue reading →

Dreams and Direction

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I had a dream about Mark just prior to my alarm going off this morning. I cherish having him “visit” me this way. I miss him so much each day and words are inadequate in capturing that feeling of loss.

What’s weird is that after having a dream, sadness usually follows. That means that for much of the day, I’m emotional in thinking about him. I guess that’s the downside of this experience, at least for me. The alternative is to push my memories and thoughts of my son aside and live in denial, which I refuse to do.

Today, not only was I sad, but I also was battling feelings of angst. It was a real battle this morning to pull out of that funk.

Part of what compounded everything was making the mistake of looking at a Facebook back-and-forth on the page of someone I respect. She’s a talented food writer and activist who is very up-front about her opinions on subjects beyond plant-based veganism. This morning, she was trying to facilitate a conversation about the recent school shooting in Florida. Given our Balkanized manner in America for the short-term if not longer, trying to be thoughtful and hold an opposing opinion invites trolling, or just plain ignorance and stupidity. Continue reading →

Let Them Speak

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Losing a child is an experience that alters your life forever. Parents never get over it. I know this firsthand.

Last Wednesday, 17 students lost their lives in Parkland, Florida. The grief and loss that follows parents burying their adult child brings with it shock, and a host of other powerful emotions. The only solace they might feel in the days, weeks, months (and beyond) often comes from the kind and empathetic people that come alongside them and share in their loss.

When a tragedy has a public component, then this means the media comes calling. Parents, along with fellow classmates, will be asked an incessant line of questions—some of them invasive and even, just plain heartless and worse—stupid.

My son wasn’t gunned down with an assault rifle, but when the car impacted his body along U.S. 90 in Crestview, Florida, killing him immediately, he was just as dead. My wife and I have been picking up the pieces of our lives ever since—we’ve now passed the one-year anniversary, and continue counting.

I’m not going to say I know exactly what the parents of the 17 classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland are feeling today and have been for a week. I will say I have a sense about what the pain feels like—for me, it felt like my heart was ripped from my chest.

When a son or daughter is murdered like their children were, and the media turns it into a circus primarily to enhance ratings (and sell advertising), anger is never too far away. In my case, I ended up telling a writer from a major newspaper to “fuck off” when all she cared about was including Mark in her story about people crossing America who had been killed after being hit by a vehicle. She was heartless.

I have been amazed by the strength and resolve of students like Emma Gonzalez and Cameron Kasky, some of the more prominent classmates (among many), in speaking out forcefully in the aftermath of the mass shooting at their school. Not sure if the adults plan to follow their lead.

Students have become the leaders in Parkland, FL [Photo-Saul Martinez/NY Times]

Continue reading →