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Geneva drove down from Spokane, I came from Harrisburg, and we met at an Airbnb in Portland in a unique community called Ladd’s Addition that was platted in a wagon wheel shape in the late 1800s and planted generously in elms and roses. Our house was more than 100 years old, solid and welcoming, with a large front porch and dark wood floors that creaked.
Technically she is an ex-sister-in-law, no longer married to my oldest brother, but Geneva still feels like family, and we have a lot in common. She knows my history, my siblings, my children. We overlapped for two years at a church in Hubbard, Oregon, and we know many of the same people in the spiderwebbed network of Mennonites in Oregon that significantly shaped both of our lives.
For three days, we drank tea, shopped at Goodwill and quirky little shops, ate the fruit we brought along, read books, rested and journaled.
And we talked. On comfortable chairs on the porch we discussed our kids, her grandbaby and my siblings. Life in our 60s. Our parents, our regrets, our health. And our griefs.
Geneva knew and loved our son Steven, and I told her of the things I miss, my regret that I didn’t insist he go to a doctor when he was obviously sick, and the heavy sadness that I carry with me all the time since he passed in November.
Geneva listened quietly without getting uncomfortable, and she didn’t minimize my emotions or spiritualize them into some grand purpose or concoct shallow words of comfort. Instead she said, “It’s been — what? Seven months? Of course it still hurts this bad.”
Strange how, just when I thought nothing could possibly help, that simple validation was exactly what I needed. It didn’t make it better, but it shifted the load.
Obviously, Geneva wasn’t Steven’s mom, but she was his aunt, and she loved him and remembers him and laughs as she tells me stories of our sons’ adventures as kids.
This is not the first time Geneva and I have navigated grief together. July 2 is not only the 8-month anniversary of Steven’s sudden passing but the 20-year anniversary of our 23-year-old nephew Leonard’s death by suicide.
In the cool evening on the porch of that beautiful house in Portland, we remembered those dark days when she and I, along with three of our children, camped out in my parents’ basement in rural Minnesota.
Sick with shock and grief, we tried to carry each other through while supporting my elderly parents, silent with sorrow, and our crushed and devastated teenagers.
We talked a lot that week in 2006. Sometimes, we cried; and other times we laughed illogically and hysterically, such as when I wandered around the front yard under the elm trees trying to find a spot that provided enough bars on my cell phone screen to call my husband. “Dorcas is out looking for bars,” Geneva told someone in the family, and then we laughed far harder than was sane or sensible, our impossibly huge emotions needing an outlet.
That week seemed to stretch on forever, as Leonard’s service was delayed due to the festivities in the community on the Fourth of July. Meanwhile, relatives gathered, church women brought huge roasters of food, and day followed endless day.
July 6 that week was not only Leonard’s viewing but our daughter Emily’s 16th birthday. Geneva insisted on a celebration, so we all piled in the car and drove to the local Dairy Queen. “OK, see this line on the sidewalk?” Geneva said. “On this side, we’re sad. On that side, we’re going to have fun for Emily’s birthday.”
Of course it didn’t really work, but we got ice cream, sat outside at a round picnic table in the damp, warm evening air to eat it, and did our best to make it a happy moment for Emily. What mattered was that we remembered. Treading water in a lake of grief, I didn’t have the energy to plan a party. Geneva made sure we did something.
The next day, we wore black dresses and sat in the front rows of the church, dizzy with the unreality of the moment, as a large middle-aged man, a blind friend of Leonard’s, was led to the microphone and sang eight verses of the hymn “Abide with Me” in a deep, resonant voice. The music reached the far corners of the church and penetrated our stunned minds in a way that nothing else matched. Leonard’s pastor from South Dakota spoke comfort to us, and friends gave tribute, all of it barely registering for me but somehow remembered later.
For 20 years, whenever I hear “Abide With Me,” I am immediately carried back to that church in Minnesota and that moment of incredible beauty and indescribable pain. “The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.”
And now it is eight months since our son’s passing. I’ve learned that grief is a wild and unpredictable mix of memories, gut punches, laughter, love and fathomless pain. Nothing makes it better, in the sense of making it not hurt so bad. But what makes the most difference in facing it and moving forward is the presence of a friend who knew and loved your person and stays with you in that dismal basement, unflinching. “Of course it hurts this bad,” they say. It doesn’t make it better, but their validation is a glimmer of light. Someone is here, a tangible gift from God. I am not alone. Maybe I can make it through today and even welcome tomorrow.
