Siphoning the Fear and the Trauma After Losing June

It’s a new year and despite the promising events on the horizon for our family, including a fresh start in the form of a move out of state, I have very little to say. The last two nights just after my son was placed in his crib, June’s former crib, and my daughter, husband, and I retreated to our room, fear cast itself upon me, again. Fear comes and goes for every reason, but I try to control it. I ask it to leave. I ask it to leave me alone.

As my two counterparts drifted asleep, I was left wide-awake staring into the darkness. Waiting for the negative energy to envelope me and feast on my still, anxious body. From bed, I watched the door frame which I could achingly make out in the light of the moon, waiting for shadows to pass by, or worse, stop and stare me in the eye.

These shadows are physical and metaphorical ghosts of my past. Some shadows live in my head, and visit when I am most vulnerable, usually on the cusp of sleep. They come in the form of repetitious thoughts I cannot control: The day June died. Her perfect heart-shaped lips. Her father’s eyes when we found out the cancer had returned. What June would have been like when she grew up. The painfully beautiful life her father and I would have given her. These are the memories which live in shadow and repeatedly come out to haunt me when life grows still and quiet.

There are other shadows I live in fear could visit at any moment. They are shadows of the future. Shadows made up of anticipatory grief and anxiety. I must be ready for them when they do visit. I wasn’t ready when June got sick. I wasn’t prepared for the catastrophic upheaval June’s ultimate death created in my life.

Now, I fear being unprepared for other unpredictable life events of which my rational brain knows I cannot prepare for. I realize no one could ever be prepared for their child to die of cancer, but the residual trauma that lives in my every cell makes me believe I have to prepare. It’s the same trauma that tells me I should prepare my children for the end of the world and asks my husband, “should we build an underground shelter?” It’s irrational. It’s as unpredictable and surprising as the trauma of June’s diagnosis.

It’s the same trauma that shoots cortisol through my blood stream when my son throws a toy and it makes a loud noise. My body cannot differentiate between a loud noise and something terrible going wrong. My body believes a loud noise equates to something terrible having happened. Loud noises were not part of my trauma with June’s diagnosis and treatment, nonetheless they are part of my trauma now. My body cannot translate what my mind is saying. My mind is telling it breathe, that everything is going to be okay, which I have physical proof of because June died nearly two years ago, and I have survived, and yet, my body won’t buy in to what my mind is selling. How can I convinced my traumatized body of what my mind now knows, that actually, every thing is and will be okay.

I am a mother who has suffered trauma. I’m not talking about childhood trauma, although that too, exists. I am talking about the trauma of being told your baby has cancer. The trauma of watching your daughter die. The trauma of my hands being tied behind my back as I watched her wither away in front of me. This trauma rears its ugly head randomly and makes me believe the shadows will appear. I must keep a look out. The shadows are real. The trauma tells me I have no defenses. They’re coming for me.

The trauma keeps me on my toes. It sneaks up on me while I float in pristine waters on my back gazing at the sky. It rips me underwater just as I start to feel peace flood my body. Just as soon as I become comfortable in a new environment.

The trauma that ended with June’s death makes me believe everything is mine to lose, and that some day it will be taken from me. I truly and bitterly understand the phrase, “nothing in life is guaranteed” and now I must figure out how to live with it.

It is in these moments I beg my brain to turn off the torture. I wonder if this is life now after losing June and instead of fighting against the current of trauma, perhaps I should just succumb to it.

Fear seeps into where fear should not exist, in the safest and most familiar spaces, like my home and my bed. It continually takes from me. As I suffer silently in the presence of fear, I ask the Higher Power to take the fear from me. It’s the only thing I have left to do. It’s the only thing I haven’t done, today. I’ve done everything else I can do in a day to evade the fear and heal the trauma. Nothing works. I stare into darkness and pull the covers up to my chin while watching the door, and I whisper:

Please take my fear.

Please take my fear.

Please take my fear.

I make sure to add “please” and finish with “thank you” to show I am respectful and utterly grateful for a better outcome than what I have so far been given in life. Despite June dying, I am still grateful for what I have.

In some twisted way, I am grateful for the trauma because it’s a reminder of what I have survived. When my body responds to a loud noise by jumping, briefly shouting, fearing the worst, and shuddering when I realize everyone is okay, I am reminded that I have overcome one of the most horrific situations any parent will have to endure. I am standing here today, alive and almost well. My trauma response reminds me June lived. While I hope to not live with a trauma response for the rest of my life, I know I can learn to live with the trauma.

“Please take my suffering,” has become my daytime mantra just after I wake. Still in my pajamas, I sit on the edge of my bed in the light of the picture window with my eyes closed and whisper words of gratitude. I let the sunlight penetrate my face. I absorb the first few rays of the day and I thank the heavens that I am alive to spend another day with my children and husband. I say good morning to June and tell her for the first time of the day how much I love her. I don’t know if she’s able to hear me. Every day multiple times a day, I package my love for June which consists of I love you’s and snippets of the days stories, and send it into the Universe hoping it will arrive to her. I love you, June.

I have an understanding about life that many have yet to come to understand. It’s intrinsically entwined with my trauma. It’s an understanding I can feel, as well as think. I will forever know it and never not. I’ve tried to erase it. I’ve tried to forget it, but it’s an understanding that still exists at the bottom of a bottle and is quite honestly, more terrifying when I arrive there. I avoid the bottom of the bottle.

Grief which has temporarily erased my memory has almost let me for a moment on several occasions forget, but the understanding comes back because it lives beneath the surface of grief. It lives in my bones. It exists deep within my subconscious as I lay sleeping. It exists in my every minute of watching my living children. Constant, careful’s and get down’s because the next second could result in death.

I’m talking about the fragility of life.

I express my gratitude for what I have in the shadow of fear of what I could lose. If I don’t express my daily gratitudes aloud, then the fragility of life will take over and kill me. A swirling, reckless mix of fear and gratitude in the glass menagerie of life.

Fear is the byproduct of love being taken away too soon. Like in the case of June being taken from me, being taken from our family, being taken from earth. Fear is the opposite of love. This I know.

Grief is love and it really is lovely because I make it that way. Grief is the continuation of love that I have for June. I know I will love June until the day I die and therefore will also grieve her until I die. Grief is loving a dead child. Grief will accompany me into old age. I am okay with that as long as my love for June doesn't interfere negatively with my daily life or interactions with my living children. When it interferes negatively, because it will, I know it’s both hurt and fear rising to the surface. I don’t push it away, but I channel it into something else, and hopefully more productive. If I can channel negativity surrounding grief back into love, then grief becomes lovely again.

The shadow side of grief is the one that I could live without, but there is a shadow to everything and everyone, so I accept it and try to learn from it. It’s the side that interferes with the love and tries to obscure it. If it takes over, it strips me of love, it strips me of the will to live and if I let it take over, it becomes me. The shadow side of love is fear, the shadow side and not coincidentally, of grief is also fear.

Grief is both love and fear. Fear is the side of grief that sometimes lets itself in when you’re least expecting and takes over. It’s also part of trauma. The ego doesn’t know fear because it’s an invention of the mind. The ego is self. The ego is pure and at conception, the ego is only love. The mind invents fear and allows it to penetrate the ego, but the ego doesn’t want it, spends it’s life rejecting it in search of love. Grief is love, and the underbelly of love is fear. 

Please take my fear.

Please take my fear.

Please take my fear.

If fear is taken, love stays. Grief stays wholesome within love. Grief unlike love is penetrable, despite grief being synonymous with love. You might wonder how this is possible, and I’ll explain that grief is porous. Love is not porous. Love is impenetrable. Nothing will ever be a true synonym of love, for me, except June or any of my children. June is love. If I can rid myself of the underbelly of grief which is fear, then I can live as one with June and my children in a state of love. 

How can I live in love of June when there is constant nagging fear trying to penetrate my grief? How can I move forward in love when I am dragged back by fear to the fact that June is dead? June will always be dead. June will never live again in my life.

At night, I stare into the darkness. The box that holds June’s ashes sits on the bureau next to our bed. I wonder if she can read my thoughts from wherever she is as I try to fight off the negative energies swirling around my body. In the darkness, alone, I ask for June for her protection.

I have days when the fear from the trauma visits, but nearly two years after June’s death, I am clear on my stance. I know there is hope. That despite not being able to feel nor see the hope, I know not every day will be like today. Fortunately, because I’ve discovered the hope in a situation wrought with despair, I know one day I will wake up and both feel and see hope again. I tell myself the worst has come. The worst has gone. There is life to still live. The underbelly of grief is ugly. It’s painful. It’s scary. The underbelly of grief is not me and I’m going to continue to work on how to penetrate it with love. More love.

Every day I wake up, I welcome love and reject fear. I feed my body what it needs through meditation, yoga, and proper nourishment. I care for my mind, my body, my soul.

Everyday I live, my soul comes a little closer to June’s. I imagine that one out of one-hundred I love you’s will reach her. The trauma is not me. The love is me. The love is June.

So when my son bangs two pots together, I run to him and pick up him up. I lift his body to my chest and breathe in his intoxicating smell and kiss his milky cheeks over and over and tell him how much I love him. I am not going to let the trauma ruin me. If I did, I wouldn’t be the Mama that June died knowing.