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On February 15, 2024, I had the pleasure and opportunity to be one of seven storytellers to tell a true story for the I Am Project produced by the Nest Theatre in Columbus, OH. Here is my story. Note: this story is about grief and loss.

There are two time periods in my life, before the accident and after the accident. I do not know if I fully remember before the accident. I was often busy, doing all different types of work, projects, papers, and school. And in all honesty, I have a terrible memory. But I do know, I know in my heart that I always made time for the ones I loved. 

Before the accident and after the accident. That’s how my husband and I talk about it. But what it really means is, with Isaiah and without Isaiah. 

See, last year, I told a story about not being enough to learn that I am enough to want to live in this world without Isaiah. Today, I know that I have evolved, as I do not question if I want to live, I am practicing how to live again. 

I actually don’t like: “With Isaiah and without Isaiah.” As words are strong, they carry meaning, and they absolutely can hurt. But the meaning of words can evolve. Slowly over time, and other times as quick as the words come out your mouth or even seeps into your thoughts. As some words hit me a little differently than they ever have before. 

STRONG, the word strong has changed for me. I don’t feel strong. Living my life with an entire piece of me missing. Some days I’m just trying to make it to the next knowing that my heart has been shattered. Carrying trauma and the feeling of being damaged to never be whole again. Is this strength?

LOSS. That’s a tricky word for me to grasp. We lost our son. When one is made aware that someone has lost something, there is a potential that it can be found, it simply implies that one doesn’t know where it is. A temporary loss. 

We lost our son. The “loss” of someone you love, you know they are not just misplaced, and you await to accept the fact that you won’t see them in this life again. A permanent Loss.

But is that always true? Can my meaning of loss change? Is there a glimmer of hope that I can at least communicate with him? Maybe he’s just gone from this dimension but I can learn to connect with him in a different way. Can I change how I expect to communicate with my son? 

The meaning of life, of my life and the words I use continue to evolve. It seems that nothing is stagnant. But I question if it can be. Can I hold onto anything that I would like? Would I never let go? No, there is no need for me to get stuck pondering this, for it is not so.

Orphan, widow, widower. If I am none of these, who am I? Does our society not acknowledge through our language-our words-who I am? Is it something taboo or so heartbreaking that we don’t know how to handle it, how to talk about it, so we avoid it. I had to find the name. Vilomah–vilomah is Sanskrit for…against the natural order…a parent who has lost a child.  

The evolution of being, of becoming, watching others become, and others learning to accept that my becoming includes watching parts of life happening out of order. 

We all evolve. Whether we like it or not. However, we also have a choice. I can hold onto my trauma and pain like a security blanket, to never accept the circumstances, to try to elicit control over an accident in which I had known. I become someone unrecognizable even to myself, distant from friends and family, and yearning to take my last breath. Or I can choose to work to release the trauma, accept the grief, ride the waves that threaten to take all of the hard work away in a blink of an eye, but instead stay afloat to see the sun on the horizon when the water calms.

See, my evolution is not done. I still have a story to tell. Yes, I can feel damaged and believe I will never be whole again. But those days are fewer and farther between than they once were before. Somedays, I catch the sun beaming through the clouds in the sky, I notice glimpses of beauty within nature and I stare in awe. The electricity flickers and I begin talking to Isaiah. A white butterfly circles and I laugh thinking he’s trying to get my attention.

Yes, before the accident, I was busy and I kept myself moving, I had no regrets, for I knew that I spent time with the people that I love. After the accident, I don’t keep myself as busy. Life has slowed down. I have no regrets. I take each day as it comes. Breathing and living again. 

I am reminded, by my therapist, of a Japanese tradition called Kintsugi — which means “join with gold.” Instead of throwing objects out which have been broken, they are repaired with a gold lacquer, creating a more beautiful object than once before. I am not an object but I am evolving to become more beautiful. 

I can see the beauty in the world. I can cherish the little things that are often overlooked in our everyday life. I can love, I can be loved. Yes, I still have open wounds, but I also have scars, and my scars are gold. For I am evolving. 

Trigger warning: death and dying.

I wrote this on 9/29/22. I am at a place in which I would like to share.

I have an urge to write, but I don’t know what I want to say. 

My heart sank when I saw the trooper pull in the driveway, as I already knew.

On September 7th, I was notified that my son, Isaiah, was killed in a motorcycle accident. I was told that he did not suffer. 

As the trooper tried to comfort me, I remember seeing the pain on her face and wanting to tell her it was okay. I vacillated between rocking back and forth while sitting and pacing, all I remember saying out loud was “Oh my God.” My body was crying, I was going through the motions but I realized that there were no tears. I was questioning why I wasn’t actually crying, did I not care? I needed to cry. 

It felt so surreal. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe what I was told, it was more that this couldn’t be happening, how could this be happening. “I don’t know what to do,” kept ringing through my head. 

I am thankful that my older son was home with me at the time. Bryan made all the initial phone calls. He called and asked Abner to come home. In the end, I was the one that told him over the phone that Isaiah was no longer with us. 

I have never felt this pain before, the shock, disbelief, the horror playing out in front of me and having no control. Watching my older son be so strong and holding the pain in because I couldn’t. The realization that Isaiah was gone and I will never see him again. “What do I do?”

Left, sitting at home and not knowing what to do. There is no where to go, no escape, no ability to leave and see him or hold him. Just left.

At one point Bryan hugged me and I told him that I understand why people do drugs as whipped cream, my usual vice, just didn’t seem like it was going to cut it. “What do I do?”

The coroner calls to tell us that Isaiah didn’t suffer, they will do an autopsy in the morning and will call in the afternoon to let us know the findings and to obtain funeral home information, if we have it. It made it more real, I still don’t know what to do. How do we identify a funeral home?

That night, there was no sleep. The world was challenging my beliefs in what I thought happened after death. Your body is just a vessel his soul has moved on, but I was crying out because my son was laying in a cold draw in a morgue all by himself. Why should he have to be by himself? And in the morning he wasn’t going to have an autopsy performed, my brain was telling me that he was going to be dissected. There is nothing I can do!

Who do you reach out to in the middle of the night when you’re left with a wound through your heart and soul in which no words can accurately describe. Friends were over in the evening and supporters said to call anytime. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t call in the middle of the night to scream and cry. I needed someone to call…I thought if I knew of a grief hotline I might have called them, as I felt all alone with nobody. I still didn’t know what to do! I called none.

It has been 22 days since my son left this side of eternity. I have cried silently and outwardly, I have talked to friends and family, I have learned to accept support and help. I have learned that if there is something that I need, to ask for it; if others want to help and I don’t know what to ask for, accept whatever they are willing to give. I have worked to not avoid reminders such as pictures and videos, or even the accident site…but to engage them in small amounts that I can handle. I have kept myself busy, but sometimes too busy and needed to pull back and balance it. I am working on not feeling like a burden to others when all I do is cry when talking to them. I have walked, bicycled, worked out, journaled, read, colored, painted, spent time with family and friends, and continue to try to breathe. 

I want to talk about my son. I want to share the good times and frustrating times. I want people to know of him and to not be scared to talk about him, for his memory is a blessing (this is the first time I can say that and fully grasp what it means). 

Everyday I am making a choice. I am choosing to get up, choosing to engage in life, choosing to engage with others, and choosing to live. Somedays I choose to sit quietly and not talk, to stay in bed, to not go out, but I want to make sure that I am primarily choosing the path that will lead to my healing; whatever that may be. 

Missing In Action

It’s been a long time since my last post.  I would like to start out with an apology to all who supported me in this new journey just to turn around and watch me disappear.  Life took a hold of me, swung me around, and spit me out!  Okay, maybe not…but that’s how it feels sometimes.  Life didn’t grab a hold of me…I grabbed my life, shook it up, turned it upside down, and then cried about my life decisions!!!

Alright, let me fill you in…

Over a year ago I made a decision to go back to school.  And to be honest, it was one of the toughest decisions that I made.  It included a lot of soul searching, trying to understand my purpose and the purpose in returning to school, talking to my family, consulting with friends, and a whole lot of crying.  When I sit back and think about it, the crying part seems strange.  Why cry about deciding whether I want to go back to school?  I don’t know if I will ever fully have that answer, but what I do know is that I was scared.  I was scared to not only abruptly change my life, but my families.  I was scared of the effort, the amount of work, and quite honestly I was scared of failing.  What if I take the GRE and bomb it? What if I apply and I don’t get accepted?  What if I get accepted and I flunk out?  Or, what if others discover that I’m a fraud and find out that I really don’t know anything?  (Ugh…those damn inner thoughts can really mess a person up!!)

I remember having a conversation with my mother.  I told her that I was scared about going back and trying.  I was scared that dyslexia would prevent me from getting through this next step in my education.  A master’s degree was hard enough, but writing a dissertation…you gotta be kidding me.  My mom told me that I needed to apply, that she has watched me accomplish so much in my life, that I needed to keep going and not let fear hold me back…as she wished she didn’t allow her fear to hold her back.  So you know what I did…I cried some more!!

Today, I am proud to say that I am more than halfway through my first semester of being a PhD student.  There has been many obstacles getting to this point.  I committed to studying for the GRE, completing the application process, writing a paper explaining why I wanted to get my PhD, and so much more.  The reality of knowing that if I got accepted, I would be leaving my family home to stay in an apartment throughout the week away from my husband and son.  I wrestled with the conflicting concepts of being a bad mother who left her family to being a role model for chasing her dreams.  So, I have surrendered to the idea that I am a role model mother who uses technology to keep in touch and drives many miles every week to spend quality time with my family!

Life surely has been different, and as stated earlier, I continue to question my life decisions some days.  But most days, I work hard to keep a float and meeting all the deadlines and expectations.  Expectations…lets end with that!  I have been guilty of having expectations too high for myself.  I believe that we should have expectations for ourselves, I believe we should work hard to reach those expectations, but I really screwed up when I set some unrealistic expectations.  The only thing unrealistic expectations do is make you feel miserable.  Set them, just make sure they’re within reason…otherwise you’re just setting yourself up to feel like a failure even when you’re succeeding!

 

 

The following piece was written for a storyteller show at the beginning of this year.  I found myself going back over it, as it is still relevant…and will always be relevant!  Do you remember your New Year’s Resolutions?

When I hear resolutions, I automatically think of identifying New Year’s resolutions.  To be honest, I really struggle with creating New Year’s Resolutions. Secretly, it almost feels forced to me to create this goal at the beginning of the New Year…that personally, I most likely won’t achieve.  The first thing that usually comes to my mind are gym’s being over crowded to later die down and some people to never be seen again!

After stewing in my thoughts of not liking New Year’s Resolutions…stuck in my pouting mode I realized it’s not the idea of resolutions that I struggle with.  It’s the idea of waiting until the New Year to create a resolution, to set a goal, to do something different, to aspire to be more, to improve in a skill. Once I shifted my mindset, it came to me!  I knew what I wanted to share. About 8 years ago, I started to change some things in my life around, and for the past 4 years…I have been very intentional in taking action in changing my life…and I would like to share some steps I have taken:

1. First, I had to be willing to evaluate myself. Explore what was working, what wasn’t working, and how did my behaviors fit into the puzzle.  Now, don’t get me wrong…this evaluation was very difficult as there are times that I wanted to blame others for the end results I was getting.  Other times, it was my fault just by being my own worst enemy. These voices that I heard in my head (don’t worry, they were mine) saying “Liat, how could you not know, you should have known better” “You could have done better”  or “shit…I don’t know shit!” So, I had to learn to be kind to myself, as I’m listening to everything I tell myself.
2. In evaluating myself, I had to be willing to learn.  Learn from my experiences, admit my mistakes and shortcomings.  Why does learning have to be so painful sometimes. I found out that it was hard for me to learn…not let me read something and pick up this book knowledge type of learning…learning about myself, about the mistakes I made, learning what I did wrong.  It’s like taking a bullet to your ego… But I over time I began to change how I thought about learning. It didn’t have to be all about what I did wrong. I again, had to change my mindset and to be open to feedback and criticism, to do better, to be a better person, be a better critical thinker, to allow others to challenge me, call me out on my bullshit when I needed it.
3. Then I went on a mission exploring what I had control over.  I always think back to the serenity prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
4. In theory, the serenity prayer is awesome…I don’t know about you but just saying it makes me feel more at peace.  But the application…that is a totally different beast. Like accepting that I can’t change the behavior of someone else that drives me crazy.  Accepting that my son’s will make their own gosh darn decisions…even though I am the one who brought them into this world. So CONTROL…I think a lot of us..including me have control issues.  And we keep hitting our head over and over again trying to change something that is out of our control. That vaguely reminds me of the common definition of insanity. By the way..hint, hint.
5. So, when I finally recognized what was truly in my control, what was not in my control, and like a true control person…what I may have some influence over…then I had to learn to accept and let go.
6. The movie Frozen has a great motto, but damn it…letting it go is one of the hardest things to do.  But, the times that I have made it over that hump…it’s the most wonderful, beautiful experiences I can have.  It’s like I have been carrying the weight of the world on my chest…which my weight is light, so I can only envision this…and then once I changed my mindset, I’m lighter, I can breathe easier…and dammit, I became my own superhero.

So, I truly believe that I have been going on this journey on a daily basis.  Sometimes I’m walking with tears in my eyes, some days I feel like I am in quicksand, some days I get scared and I take a couple steps back.  But in the end I have discovered that when I stop judging myself harder than I would judge my friend, when I tell myself positive things, when I keep it real with myself.  When I experience something, I put my whole heart into it, I put my mind into it, I am choosing to live in each moment, to live my life without regrets, and without the should haves or would haves.  I am enjoying this life that I have been given, I’m smiling, I’m laughing, I’m crying, and I’m arguing… but I don’t carry the pain into my everyday interactions as if it is still happening. So, my resolution is to continue to learn about myself, continue to be a better person, to achieve my goals and dreams, to not put myself on the back burner for others, but to be kind to others, to help others within my capacity.  To live my life as tomorrow isn’t granted. But God, I would still like to see tomorrow!