Claire Bidwell Smith » Excerpts from the Ether

Excerpts from the Ether: Diving into the Wreck

Claire Bidwell Smith — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 21:11:22 +0000

Something that has always stood out to me about grief is how lonely it is. When you’re going through the loss of a loved one, it can be a very isolating experience. No one around you quite understands what you’re feeling. My main intention behind writing and publishing The Rules of Inheritance was to put my experience out into the world so that others would feel a little less alone in their own journeys. Over the last couple of months since the book was published, I’ve received some incredible letters from readers and I’m so humbled to share some of them here.

In this particular letter the writer reminds me of one of the universal traits I so often come across with grief, and it’s that, as grievers, we are so hard on ourselves. We put so much pressure on ourselves to get through it, get over it, get away from it, when really, the only way through it is to really sit with it, to steep ourselves in our grief. We must acknowledge how difficult it is to lose someone we love, and we must forgive ourselves our confusion and despair. Those qualities are simply a reflection of how much love we have for the person who is gone.

February 26, 2012

Dear Claire,

I just finished your book.

I started last night – my little (8 year old, not so little) baby girl asleep next to me… my husband out with a friend. Read until 12p – taking in each word, thought, feeling (so many)… tears streaming my face. . .Finished this eve - my daughter tucked sweetly in bed.. sleeping husband next to me. Heavy heart, light heart. over and over.

Almost 3 years ago, I watched as my dearest, sweetest, best friend cousin died three months into being diagnosed with colon cancer.. her beautiful daughter and mine born just a few weeks of each other, 4 years earlier………Six weeks later, her brother – my soul mate, so heavy in life pain and loss – committed suicide in a dark, lonely hotel room.

And I was so sure that part of me went with them….

Thank you for your words – they were so painful - & comforting. I am sure you are and will be bombarded…. but i just needed to say thank you……. for reminding me that it’s okay to still be sometimes crippled with how much I miss them.

And then to hold my sweet daughter and sleeping husband – and be reminded that I am alive.

Peace, strength, light and love,

Stina

Norway, Maine

Excerpts from the Ether: Fearful Symmetry

Claire Bidwell Smith — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:06:37 +0000

Welcome to Excerpts from the Ether. Every Saturday I’m going to be excerpting a letter from a reader (with their permission, of course) and featuring them here on my blog.

Something that has always stood out to me about grief is how lonely it is. When you’re going through the loss of a loved one, it can be a very isolating experience. No one around you quite understands what you’re feeling. My main intention behind writing and publishing The Rules of Inheritance was to put my experience out into the world so that others would feel a little less alone in their own journeys. Over the last several weeks since the book was published, I’ve received some incredible letters from readers and I’m so humbled to share some of them here.

In this particular letter the writer shares an essay that she wrote about her father and I am devastated by how beautifully honest it is. I’m sure you will be too.

February 15, 2012

Dear Claire,

Your book touched me so deeply. I lost my father to cancer ten years ago one week after my first child was born, and reading about your experience of loss helped me to process my own.

Here’s the biggest thing: the WAY you write is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I’ve been trying to write, to BE a writer, for so long, but I could never find a way to express myself that felt right, that felt like something worthy of sharing with other people. But as I read your book I found myself thinking, I could tell my story like this too.

Fearful Symmetry

I am twenty nine years old. I am standing in a hospital room and I am watching my father. Other people are standing around me, and we are waiting. I am watching his chest go up and down, up and down. I have been watching him breathe for countless hours, and I will watch the same thing for many hours more. He has been unconscious since last night, and the doctors have retreated with an unspoken finality. There is no doctoring left to do, and now they are just waiting, too.

I am mesmerized by the brutal rhythm of his lungs. With breathing the only thing left he can do, his lungs seem to have expanded into huge machines with a life force of their own. With each breath his chest lurches up with a whoosh of air, and then crashes down as the air rattles out forcefully. The rest of his body is shrunken and withered, but his lungs seem so strong. In a little corner of my mind a tiny voice defiantly insists that he is too strong to die.

After each breath there is a pause, and I feel the room go still as we all wait to see if another one will come. We are all rising and falling along with my father’s breaths, the cycle of agony repeated minute by minute as the days wear on. I am caught in this wave, dashed into the rocks again and again.

It takes two days for my father to die, just as it took two days for my first child to be born one week ago. I am struck by the similarities; the days of exhaustion and waiting and rhythmic pain. I’ll later look back and marvel at the symmetry of it – ten days bookended by two days of struggle for my son to come into the world, and two days of struggle for my father to leave it.

It is Friday, and I have gone against doctor’s orders and driven myself to the hospital to see my father. It has only been three days since Nathan was born, and I am still exhausted from the days of laboring with no sleep and little food. My feet and legs are still swollen, and they throb and buckle as I walk through the hospital corridors. I hold on to whatever I can to steady myself. As I walk, I start to feel the gelatinous weakness of my legs rising up through the rest of my body and I am suddenly reeling with exhaustion and grief. I hold onto a railing as I shake with sobs and try to keep standing. I realize that I have lost control of my bodily functions as my childbirth- weakened bladder releases its contents. I am grateful that there is no one around to see me like this. In a few minutes I have calmed myself down enough to find a bathroom and clean myself up the best I can.

–Ellen Holliday, Baton Rouge

Excerpts from the Ether: Beautiful Sorrows

Claire Bidwell Smith — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:40:53 +0000

Welcome to Excerpts from the Ether. Every Saturday I’m going to be excerpting a letter from a reader (with their permission, of course) and featuring them here on my blog.

Something that has always stood out to me about grief is how lonely it is. When you’re going through the loss of a loved one, it can be a very isolating experience. No one around you quite understands what you’re feeling. My main intention behind writing and publishing The Rules of Inheritance was to put my experience out into the world so that others would feel a little less alone in their own journeys. Over the last several weeks since the book was published, I’ve received some incredible letters from readers and I’m so humbled to share some of them here.

February 26, 2012

Dear Claire,

I experienced my own parental loss at the same age as you did, losing my 43 year old mother when I was 18 and a half years old. At age forty today, I am a middle school guidance counselor with a strong interest in grief and bereavement.

Back in November I was chosen to be a juror in a double homicide trial and attempted murder on a third victim. Over the course of this trial, I found myself revisiting my own grief as I sat and listened to the victim in the case speak of her trauma and the impossible feat of trying to put her life back together. On the day of sentencing (after we found the defendant guilty on all counts) I went and spoke to the young victim because I felt this strong connection to her. Looking back now, I realize that ‘connection’ that I saw and felt was my own 20 year journey in grief that she herself was right in the middle of experiencing (she watched both her grandmother and mother being murdered in front of her while she ran for her life).

Following the trial, I had a bit of a breakdown when I returned to work. I looked at the piles of paper on my desk and the multitude of emails that I had to reply to and realized what is really important. My life was speaking to me…I needed to make a change…I needed to feel that what I do is important work. I started exploring death education, bereavement and grief counseling. I have connected with another school counselor about starting up grief support groups in our schools and I have signed up with our local Bereaved Families chapter to start some grief support training. Then, this weekend, I read your brilliant memoir of your own grief journey. And now, I am sending my first ever email to an author I can’t stop thinking about. In your book, you said many, many things that rang so true to me and my life. But, how you so eloquently described grief in a way that has never been expressed before will stay with me forever.

–Gina, Toronto, Canada

This letter strikes me in so many ways. The first is how we see ourselves in others’ stories. I’m always amazed by the conundrum of how unique all of us are as people, yet how we all walk such universal paths, and feel universal pain and love. Gina was allowed a glimpse into her own experience of loss as she listened to the victim of the court case recount her own journey. Even though both women likely feel incredibly alone in their grief, there is something beautiful, I think, about the connection they share.

The other thing that strikes me about Gina’s letter is how she reacted to the experience of revisiting her grief. Rather than let it spin her into depression or more feelings of sadness, she returned to her life more determined than ever to change it, and to create something valuable out of her loss. That was also the big turning point in my life — choosing to stop wallowing in my pain, to stop dragging it around with me everywhere, and to create something meaningful from my experience. I think that’s all we can ever do with pain and sorrow, really. Make something beautiful out of it.

I’m so thankful to Gina for reminding me of these heartbreakingly lovely truths.