Looking for Wind at Our Backs

As we approach what would be Rivena’s 29^th birthday this weekend, there’s part of me that feels compelled to write something. After all, my cadence with this blog has been twice per year around the hard days on the calendar – something I’ve written about here before. And yet, the words seem harder to come by as more time passes from losing her. It’s as if I lost my voice somewhere along the way. The more I think about why that might be, the harder it gets to come up with anything new or relevant to share.

With that said, I still write this for me. Enough of you have told me there is something in here helpful for others, so I remain happy to share my thoughts in the hopes that some of my (and our) experience resonates in some way with your own. I recognize it can sometimes be nice simply to know somebody else is in the boat with you, even if it might feel we’re floating aimlessly along.

Boatseat

Because my own words are hard to find this year, I hope you don’t mind if I borrow some of Rivena’s. When she was just in eighth grade, she wrote an essay entitled Boatseat that I’d like to share with you, with some of my own thoughts interspersed. Her words, which I am including verbatim, are in italics.

One of my best memories is that of sailing.  I was on a vacation in Virgin Gorda, an island in the Caribbean.  We had hired a man to take us out to a small island called Anegada on his twin-masted schooner.   The day before, at the beach, I had seen many ships sail by.  Most of them were white-sailed, with the masts and hull painted white as well.  They were beautiful to see sailing, but one stood out from the rest.   It had gorgeous dark red sails, billowing from hickory-finished masts.  When the next day my parents, grandparents, and uncle decided to take a sailing trip, I hoped the ship was the beautiful one with red sails, although I knew the chances were slim.   Honestly, I didn’t really want to go sailing, I preferred the prospect of relaxing on a beach to becoming nauseated on a boat.  Everyone else was very excited, though, and I was curious to what it was like, so I didn’t oppose my family.

Grief Fatigue

Since losing Rivena roughly 3 ½ years ago, I’ve found it increasingly hard to be honest about how I’m really doing. With the passage of time, the concept of “grief fatigue” begins to feel very real. What I mean by that is there comes a point where we continue to feel everything that has been there since our loss – in our case, when Rivena died – but we just stop talking about it. As a result, I’ve found myself becoming more distant. And it’s been an equal opportunity distancing. I’ve retreated from my closest friends, from acquaintances, and even to some degree from Kim and Madison. Sure, Kim and I are still together all the time, but there’s also no denying the fact I don’t share as much as I once did. These obstacles I’ve created between me and others, while done out of self-preservation, have unfortunately served as a form of my own self-isolation.

Just like Rivena wrote about being hesitant to speak up for fear of spoiling anybody else’s fun, I’ve found myself rattling off platitudes instead of forcing the awkward and uncertain interactions that come with being real.  For example, the simplest question, “How’s it going?” is one that almost 100% of the time gets a lie as a reply. In fact, one of my favorite podcasts is titled with what I think is probably the most truthful response: Terrible, Thanks for Asking.

Rightly or wrongly, I project onto other people the fact that they simply don’t want to hear any more about how much I miss my daughter, her way of looking at the world, or how sad I am that I won’t get to see her experience all the milestone life events that we typically celebrate. Every day, I’m sad that Rivena isn’t getting to see her younger sister find her own place in the world. I’m sad for all the future events that will happen without her. The honest answer to such a simple question as “how are you?” is, unfortunately, not one that most people really want to hear.

We all stuffed into the car we had rented, and set off for Leverick Bay, where we were to meet the captain. Now, driving there was an adventure on its own, due to the hilly terrain. This was not helped by the fact that it is a British colony, but they drive cars from America, meaning the driver both sits and drives on the left side.  Anyways, when we arrived, we walked around for a few minutes, trying to find the harbor in the small resort town. We finally found the dock, and walked to the end of the pier, waiting for our ship to arrive. After a few minutes, I noticed the dark-red sailed ship drifting into port. I took the opportunity to look at it from close up, wishing its sails were unfurled. When my parents said, “Get up, that’s it,” I looked up and asked, “Where?” having convinced myself that the ship with the beautiful sails was not ours.  I was pleasantly surprised when they pointed to the maroon sails, and I was first introduced to the Spirit of Anegada.

We clambered aboard the ship.  I immediately got a good feeling when the captain introduced himself as Keith in a British accent, and promptly showed us the cooler. We began to motor out of the bay, and the wind in my face instantly caused any doubts I had about sailing to vanish. And then we raised the sails. One of the most incredible sights in the world is that of an unfurling sail, billowing as it opened, followed by the wonderful crack of the wind catching it and pulling it taught. The beautiful sails stretched over the gentle breeze made for an image worthy of being preserved forever. 

Impact of COVID

The global pandemic of the last year and a half has introduced some form of grief to so many people who had not previously experienced much in the way of loss. In addition to the millions around the world who have actually lost somebody to the virus, almost all of us have felt some degree of loss due to COVID shutdowns, protocols, and new policies. Loss of normalcy. Loss of social interaction. Loss of the ability to feel comfortable doing everyday tasks.

Interestingly, Kim was truly pissed off when people first began talking about COVID shutdowns in terms of grief. But at its core, grief is all about the loss of life that we knew. As the world began adapting to the new reality of a global pandemic, there was a collective recognition that life as we knew it was changing, and that sense of loss became real. For Kim, Madison, and me, it was as if the rest of the world joined us – met us where we already were. For us, we had already lost the life we knew.

I bring up the concept of grief as it pertains to our collective COVID experience to highlight how easy it is to understand that idea of “grief fatigue.” How badly are we all wanting to get back to normal activities? To attend sporting events and concerts. To have kids back in classrooms. To have borders reopened to international travel. To begin checking off all of the life experiences that we have missed for the past 18 months.

Just as Rivena wrote about feeling the wind in her face, we all crave that sense of openness and freedom. Is it any wonder that we are collectively fatigued by COVID protocols? If we think about that loss of normalcy through the lens of grief, it becomes easy to understand why the level of debate over things like masks and vaccines has become so highly charged. We are by our very nature social creatures, and we’ve been largely restricted from gathering, restricted from traveling, and fearful of the loss of freedom. Grief elicits emotional responses, and there is no right or wrong way to grieve a loss. We all want to get back to normal, and while there are multiple opinions on how to do that, there remains one common element: We are all to some degree in the same boat. And we’re collectively all waiting to hear that audible ‘crack’ as we get the wind back in our sails.

As we talked and enjoyed each other’s company in the new, beautiful world that surrounded us, captain Keith offered to let someone else try sailing the ship. My grandpa, born a fisherman with a love for water, instantly snapped up at the chance. He took the wheel, and instantly began to sail over the waves as if he had been doing it his entire life. Eventually, we spied the island, so flat that it was almost invisible against the ocean. Keith told us that its highest point was 10 feet above sea level. We sailed in and were able to keep the sails up for a while. Finally, we tied up to a buoy, and put down a small raft, which we took two at a time to the Anegada pier.

 

Once we had all climbed up to the beach, we took a strange taxi with benches to another beach. I could not tell what the captain had told the taxi driver, because of his accent. When we reached the beach, however, I saw a sign displaying the name “Cow Wreck Beach”. We ordered lunch at a small bar, and rather than waiting for our food at the table, we jumped in the water and played in the ocean. When we saw that our food was ready, we hopped out of the water and ate, soaking and covered in sand.

Isolation

The very lightness and spontaneity of the scene painted here by Rivena was one of the first things stolen by COVID. The pandemic had the immediate effect of putting up physical distance and virtual walls, both among one another and with respect to the very experiences that serve to enrich our lives. Those barriers have been obvious to see. What has been less obvious are the ones we’ve chosen to hold onto. In my case, I was able to use COVID as a convenient excuse to stop seeing a therapist to work through my own grief. Did that mean I had ‘graduated’ to the point of being OK? No. Not remotely. It meant that I was fatigued enough by revisiting my own thoughts and words that I stopped wanting to spend money to do it with someone else every week. I continued to feel all the same things, but I just didn’t want to talk about it any longer, especially when I found myself saying the same things over and over again. Even I was getting tired of hearing it.

Let me be the first to say I know just how unhealthy that is. It was easy to use a time when the entire world literally shut down to put everything about my own life on hold, including my ability to be open to new experiences. As someone who used to travel for a living and who still finds it cathartic to watch clouds from the window of an airplane, having multiple trips and experiences canceled took away a huge piece of my motivation to want to work through my own grief. I was fortunate (or perhaps not) to have had a mile-long list of projects as I remodeled our new house during the lockdowns. I was too busy with my head down, covered in sawdust, hanging drywall, and setting tile to bother looking for simple pleasures outside the walls of my own home. To remain interested in seeking, and more importantly accepting help for any of my lingering grief issues – well, it seemed so far-fetched it might as well have been walking on water.

We got back into the ship and set off for the main island under the clear blue sky. I got a chance to admire the glistening blue of the ocean surrounding me, as I sat in paradise. Eventually, Keith offered for someone else to try, and my uncle took his opening. He sailed for about a half hour and offered someone else the chance. My dad spoke up, but instead of asking for himself, asked,

“How about giving [Rivena] a try?”

“Well, you can try if you want,” I responded.

“I’ve sailed before, I want to give you the chance,”

 So, despite my nervousness, I clambered up to the wheel. I still owe my dad for offering me a try, as I wouldn’t have volunteered myself, but it was the highlight of the trip for me. I felt the wooden seat covered with a nylon pad, wet with seawater. It was amazing, feeling the boat gradually respond to my touch. Rather than controlling the ship, I was making suggestions as to where it should go. Sometimes it listened, sometimes it didn’t. I don’t know how long I sailed, but it felt like a lifetime of serenity.

Takeaways

Serenity. From the writings of a 14-year-old. I may be reading a bit too much into something written by my daughter in 2006, but there are so many things about this that seem to scream at me about our present situation. First is just how much value there is in allowing ourselves to experience something new. I remember that day so clearly. And she captured it beautifully in a way that can only be seen through the eyes of someone experiencing it for the first time. But that required her to relax into the experience itself. It required giving her teenage self the permission to participate.

In the post-COVID world we find ourselves in, it means it’s time to once again be open to new experiences. Working with whatever new protocols it takes to get back to experiencing life, it means giving ourselves permission to get back to living. If you’re like most of us who experienced some feeling of grief around the normalcy COVID took away, rest assured that things will begin to settle into some version of normal once again. Yes, there may be some new requirements to do some of the things we used to do. But we will largely be able to re-establish the connections we shared with one another and get back to experiencing life and community as we knew it.

In our family’s specific case, I’m forced to acknowledge the hard truth that we will never again be the family of four that we once were. That gaping hole left by finding ourselves as a party of three will always be there. And yet, it means allowing myself to feel OK about the new normal that our family is still struggling to find. The only way we get there is by continuing to seek out the wonder of experiences yet to be had and being grateful when those opportunities arise.

Second, Rivena shows the value in being willing to accept the gentle nudge of a friend or loved one. Sometimes we (meaning I) get so wrapped up in putting on a brave face that we are (I am) unwilling to accept a helping hand in the form of kindness from others. Those closest to us often see us as we are, and their pushes, whether to try something new, expand our horizons, or break a chain of self-isolation, should be heeded. You might just be surprised by what you get. I’m grateful that my wife convinced me to try writing again… you may not be, but I am.

Finally, I love the words Rivena chose to use about guiding the boat we were all in. “I was making suggestions as to where it should go,” she wrote. “Sometimes it listened, sometimes it didn’t.” For the record, our sailboat boat did in fact reach our destination that day. But we got there by making a series of small course corrections all based on what Rivena witnessed and felt, both above the surface and below. Let that sink in for a minute. We don’t necessarily need to make wholesale changes to get where we want to go. Accepting inputs, both seen and felt, and adjusting as needed, can get the job done. If that’s not great advice for how to deal with the inevitable ups and downs of our everyday lives, I don’t know what is.

As we enter this Labor Day weekend, open yourself up to something new, be willing to accept the love and kindness of others, and pay attention to the things you see and feel. While Kim and Maddie celebrate Rivena by seeing the Jonas Brothers at Red Rocks, I’ll be remembering her 29^th birthday by traveling to witness my cousin get married, surrounded by family and friends. And I look forward to the suggestions as to where things will go…