fault

“So, it’s not my fault?!?” finale

thomjohnson732 Comments

After each of us battled through the horrible weight of guilt and self-loathing, there was yet one more battle that had to be waged. I had asked too much of my oldest, and the repercussions of that event had a ripple effect I did not foresee.

Ripple effect
Source: lessconversationmoreaction.com

What follows is the final excerpt from the chapter in my book, Good Grief?!?, by the same name – “So, it’s not my fault?!?”

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Right around the time of Gabriel’s incident, Micah grew incredibly anxious. One Sunday morning I was trying to get everyone up and out the door for church. I had minutes to get out the door when Micah came down the stairs.

“What’s wrong?” I was able to ask in spite of the irritation I was feeling.

“I didn’t get to sleep until around 4:00 a.m.”

“How come?”

“When I close my eyes, I keep seeing Mom’s body. Then I open my eyes and I can’t fall asleep.”

“How long has this been happening?”

“For a few months.”

I was stunned. Immediately I felt guilty for not knowing, for being an unfit father, for not having expected this problem. Then a crushing realization hit me. I had caused this.

“I’m sorry I had to wake you up and ask you for help,” I managed.

“It’s not your fault, Dad.” I could tell he believed what he was saying, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. We talked for a couple more minutes, then I hugged him and sent him back to bed.

At church, I reached out to Miss Michelle, asking for prayer. She’s a counselor who specializes in working with teenage girls, but I knew she’d know how to pray. What I didn’t know was that God had a plan to fully relieve me of my own, self-imposed guilt.

Michelle texted me back to meet with her after the service ended. I filled her in on my conversation with Micah.

“It’s funny, Thom,” she began, “I was just in a class about the brain this week, and I learned something that I think was meant for this moment right here. Micah’s self-conscious is trying to deal with the trauma. While we sleep, our brains deal with the events of the day and file away each event for future recall. When trauma happens, it can prevent that process from happening correctly. Micah’s brain is trying to file away the pictures of his mom, but as soon as he sees the pictures in his head, he wakes up and can’t get back to sleep.”

I listened raptly as she was talking, trying to take it all in. The anxiety building in me, however, was threatening to take over my vision and hearing.

“There’s a way you can help his sub-conscious file these pictures in his memory banks and move past this. Let me show you. While we talk, I’m going to tap on your knees. Keep talking. The action will help, I promise.”

I was nervous, thinking This isn’t going to work. Michelle is a good friend, so I decided to at least hear her out and “go with it.”

“Close your eyes, Thom,” she began. “I’m going to ask you to get a picture in your head, and then I’m going to begin tapping. Are you ready?”

I closed my eyes and nodded.

“Focus on the moment you first saw Amy the morning you found her dead.” I fixed the picture in my mind, wincing a bit. “Tell me what you see.”

I explained the scene to Michelle, including all the details I could, including Amy’s purple fingers.

“Now, how do you feel?”

I opened my eyes, startled.

“Close your eyes, fix on the picture again, and tell me how you feel.” Michelle’s tone wasn’t demeaning or correcting. She was simply compassionate. I closed my eyes again, slowly, and brought up the picture.

“I feel guilty,” I managed meekly.

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t there. She died alone.” The words came out of my mouth before I really heard them. Then I fought to keep my eyes closed. My epiphany startled me greatly. I hadn’t really known I was still holding on to this guilt.

Michelle prayed.

“Now tell me what you see, Thom,” she directed.

I refocused on the picture in my head. It had changed drastically. Amy was no longer alone in the room. Standing just behind her, with His hand on her shoulder, was a man in a white tunic. He was glowing slightly. I couldn’t see Him clearly, but I knew immediately who He was.

I stumbled with my words, continuing to stare at the picture in my head.

“Um…Jesus is standing behind Amy. She looks at peace. Her hands are still purple, and she’s still leaning up against the wall.” I paused. “But she wasn’t alone,” I finished.

Time stopped. I couldn’t hear the many people still milling about in the church sanctuary.

I never left her side, Thom.

Rivers began cascading down my face. A weight I had not realized was crushing me lifted in that moment. I exhaled a breath I seemed to have been holding on to for nearly five months. Then I opened my eyes. Michelle had stopped patting my knees. She was grinning.

“Sounds like Abba wanted to heal you too,” she said.

I stood up and hugged her. I was overwhelmed with Joy and Peace.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I managed quietly.

“No, Thom, it wasn’t. And Jesus was with her the whole time.”

 

That night, after the younger boys had gone to sleep, I sat Micah on the couch and walked him through the same process. He was as hesitant as I had been. I reminded him that Miss Michelle was a counselor with a PhD. I also reminded him that she loved us greatly and she loved God too. He finally agreed to the “odd therapy” (his words). That night, both Micah and I slept soundly. Relieved of guilt and night terrors.

It always astounds me when God uses every day, “non-holy” things in our life to move us from point A to point B. For each of my boys, what moved them from point A to point B through the battle with guilt was different. But each vehicle God used was specific to each boy’s needs, personality, and maturity level. I don’t think they’ve all “made it”; grief doesn’t just vanish. The loss of loved ones stays with us for life. We miss them. We remember them with tears and with laughter. We wish we could talk to them, and we sometimes do, as we go about our day, as if they were still right next to us. The pain doesn’t go away. I don’t think it lessens either. I think God teaches us how to grow from it, and live with it, without it destroying us completely.

“So, it wasn’t my fault?!?” part 4

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Two months would pass before the last member of this now all testosterone filled home wrestled with a similar question. With the added layer of Autism, Gabriel’s battle looked quite different than the rest of our battles, but it was a battle none the less. What follows is yet another excerpt from a chapter of my book, Good Grief?!?, in which Gabriel battled the demon of guilt.

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ASoUEvents
Source: NETFLIX

Friday, January 13, 2017, was a day I had been waiting for. The first season of A Series of Unfortunate Events had been released on Netflix. I read the books a few years prior and thought they were genius. I had tried to get my boys to read the books, but none of them took me up on the charge. I knew if they liked the show (which only covered the first four books) they might read the books. Everyone was going to be home and we were going to watch it as a family. It never donned on me before we watched the first episode (spoiler alert) that the parents die in the first two or three pages of the first book. What happened that night, was heart-rending, but I don’t regret watching it with them. It was the first time my “little man of great faith” began to ask the questions that would lead him to healing.

When the second episode ended, Gabriel bolted for his bedroom. It was a little odd for Gabriel to act that way so I followed him.

“Why did she have to leave ME, Dad?!?” He was screaming. He had emphasized the word ME; I did not.

“Honey, it was time for Mommy to go to Heaven. She’s not in pain anymore. She’s not sick anymore.” I was trying to be calm and reassuring. What followed was a cacophony of questions, sobs, tears, screams, and more questions.

After each question, Gabe sobbed while I tried to answer calmly and compassionately. I struggled with words. Amy was the Autism Whisperer. She always knew what to say. She always knew what Gabriel was trying to say, even when he was frustrated and his speech was coming out all jumbled in fits and starts. At first, I thought about trying to explain the “5 Stages of Grief” – a.k.a. D.A.B.D.A. Denial. Anger. Betrayal. Depression. Acceptance. After a quick thought, I realized I didn’t know how to deliver that information filtered for an added layer of Autism. I was struggling with my answers.

“How was she sick?”

“Why did her sickness have to kill her?”

“Why did Jesus have to take her?”

“Was it my fault?”

“Why wouldn’t she wake up when I saw her? I tried to wake her up! I tried! Didn’t she want to talk to me?!?”

“I kissed her on the cheek. Isn’t true love’s kiss supposed to wake the princess?”

The last two were the hardest to answer. Gabriel’s goodbye to his mother, before the mortuary attendants took her, was the most painful thing I had ever witnessed. He had kissed his mother on the forehead and on the cheek. Now I knew a little more. I thought he had just been saying goodbye; he was actually begging me to help keep his world together.

Unlike his brothers, Gabriel never blamed himself. He blamed Amy. She had been his world. He would have taken her place if it meant he would get to talk with her one more time. To him, Amy knew his orbit centered around her. How dare she leave him? How dare she?!?

I was struggling to calm him down. Each answer to his question brought more pain and more volume. Finally, Micah stepped in with a rescue.

“Gabriel, I got the new Hillary Scott CD for Christmas. It has mom’s song on it, the one we played at the memorial service during the slideshow. Do you want me to get it so you can listen to it?” The album is titled Love Remains, and it deals with some difficult topics, always reminding the listener that “Love Remains” – that is “God Remains”.

Micah retrieved the CD and put it into Gabriel’s boom box. I was sitting on the bed, holding a still sobbing little boy. He cued up “Thy Will”, the song Amy had listened to at least once or twice a day just before she died. As the song played, Gabriel began to calm down. When it ended, he was only sniffling.

“Can you play it again, Daddy?” he asked. Gabriel rarely called me Daddy anymore. I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking the term of endearment meant I had helped him understand, even just a little bit. I got off the bed, turned off the light, and re-started the song, this time pushing the “repeat” button. As the song continued to play, I stood there in his room, by the bed, holding my little miracle’s hand. I was taken back to the concert of prayer we had in our living room when we thought Amy’s pregnancy was not going to end with a healthy baby boy. The emotion coursing through me was similar in both places. Through the first three times the song played, Gabriel cried a little bit less each time.

After the fourth play, he asked, “Tomorrow, will you tell me Mom’s whole story? Everything you know about her, I want to know. Would you please tell me?” He was pleading.

When he woke the next morning, Gabriel was happy, really happy. For the first time in months, I saw true Joy in him again. Later that day I was driving the van and he was with me.

“Daddy, I have five questions today. Would you answer my five questions, and then tomorrow answer five more?” I smiled and nodded. His five questions:

“What happened on your first date with Mommy?”

“Were you nervous the night before you married Mom?”

“What was it like being married to Mommy?”

“How was I born?” (He liked hearing the story of his birth and his mother’s heroic battle with her body to keep the pregnancy.)

“Do you have any fun memories of Mommy?”

The whole car ride – nearly an hour – we talked and laughed. He was a different kid. It was nice having my “Gus Gus” back (as Micah had nicknamed him at birth – it’s a Cinderella thing). The fount of Joy that is Gabriel was again flowing freely.

“So, it wasn’t my fault?!?” part 3

thomjohnson731 Comment

It would be a while after both Micah and me allowed the guilt we felt to be removed from our shoulders before either of my other two sons fought a similar battle. What follows is the excerpt from the same chapter of my book, Good Grief?!?, in which my youngest realized the crushing weight he’d been carrying.

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We’d spent most of the Thanksgiving weekend with family. It had been awkward. We all felt like someone was missing. We were still in the phase of ignoring the feeling, but holidays made it especially more difficult. Emotions around the house were high. Micah had been in a car accident the day after Thanksgiving. That added to the stress in our home. It was a couple days into December when Isaiah hit the same wall, or rather the wall hit him.

Isaiah had started grief counseling shortly after Amy’s death. But it wasn’t working. He wouldn’t talk about anything of consequence for any length of time. Every time his counselor or I would bring up the topic of Amy’s death, Isaiah got jumpy…He would try to change the subject, often to something “funny”. Whatever it took to not have to talk about Amy’s death, he tried it. Sometimes he said what he thought we wanted to hear, but it was clear by the actions he was just talking for our benefit. Isaiah has a tell, however, that makes it easy to read him. When he’s overwhelmed, Isaiah runs away…or rather, he hides. When he’s hurting, he often lashes out at those close to him, for very petty things.

On a Sunday night in early December, Isaiah could no longer keep everything bottled inside anymore. It was after dinner. Isaiah and Micah had a loud verbal disagreement over something minor. I knew what was happening.

“Micah, just drop it. Isaiah’s in a mood. He’s just going to say hurtful things.”

I was trying to get Micah to break away from the fight and cool off. It didn’t work. Now he was just as mad as Isaiah had been. Micah felt slighted. He thought I was siding with his youngest brother. He didn’t think I was being fair; he was clearly right. When I realized my attempt had failed, I switched tactics. I apologized to Micah and told him he was right.

“I’ll take care of it,” I reassured Micah. “Let me talk with him.”

“You ALWAYS choose him over me! You ALWAYS take his side,” Isaiah retaliated. That’s when I knew the wall was near.

“No, I don’t,” I stated quietly and calmly. “I’m not choosing sides. I’m saying Micah’s right. Usually, I defend you, but you’re not right this time.” I knew that by talking quietly, calmly, Isaiah would be pushed over the edge. He wouldn’t calm down until he truly blew his top. Helping him reach that boiling point would lead me to the heart of the problem.

Slammed Door
Source: https://ubisafe.org/explore/dorr-clipart-slammed/

“It’s not fair!” He was screaming. “Just leave me alone!” Isaiah was enraged. He stomped up the stairs, louder than he had ever done in the past. I climbed the stairs slowly after him, further pushing the boiling point. He stormed down the hallway and slammed his bedroom door behind him. I took almost twice as long to climb the stairs and make my way to Isaiah’s door.

I knocked.

“Go away!”

“Isaiah, what’s wrong?”

“I said, GO AWAY!”

I reached down and opened the door. Isaiah was lying prone on his bed. His face buried in his pillow. When he realized I had entered, he screamed into the pillow.

I took my spot on the side of Isaiah’s bed. I put my hand in the middle of his back.

“Isaiah,” I began, just above a whisper, “what’s wrong? I know this isn’t about Micah. What’s really wrong?”

“Just please go away,” he said through the muffle of the pillow.

“I can’t, Isaiah. I need to know what’s wrong, and I’m not leaving until we get to the bottom of this.”

 

I sat on that bed in near silence, hand upon my son’s back, for nearly three hours. Every once in a while I would ask Isaiah “What’s wrong?” He never answered. Midnight had come and gone. I was tired, and I had to teach Monday morning. I needed sleep. I could have justified leaving and going to bed, but I knew the situation would multiply by morning.

Isaiah and I are so very alike. I usually know what’s going through his head in any given situation. It’s the closest thing I have to telepathy (which I’ve asked God for many times). This time I knew he was angry about something related to his mom. There had been so much stress in the house. Everyone had cried buckets, that is everyone but Isaiah. He’d cried…briefly. He witnessed my breakdown over Amy’s “missing” wedding dress. He’d listened to conversations Micah and I had while Isaiah was supposed to be asleep. He knew Gabriel was an emotional mess. I added everything up and realized Isaiah had decided not to feel. He saw everything falling apart around him and decided he’d be the stable one of the family.

I finally broke the silence.

“Isaiah, you’ve got to talk to me. I’m not going to bed until this is settled.”

He finally rolled his body a little to the right and looked up at me.

“What’s going on in your head?” I asked rhetorically.

“It’s my fault,” he whispered.

“Are you talking about Micah, or something else?” Isaiah sat up in the bed.

“It’s my fault,” he repeated. “She didn’t have to die,” he whispered.

“Honey, it’s not your fault,” I said, still rubbing his back.

“I should have heard her. I should have woken up. I could have helped her.” Each statement got a little louder.

“Isaiah, there was nothing you could have done.”

“You mean I didn’t do anything.”

“No. You couldn’t have done anything. When God calls someone Home, it’s their time. We can’t stop death.”

“But…” he didn’t finish.

“Isaiah, listen to me. The doctors believe Mom died of a blood clot. There wasn’t anything that could have been done to prevent it. She would have died if I had been upstairs in the bed. She would have died if you or your brothers heard her and tried to help. There was nothing you could have done.”

“Really?” he asked feebly.

“Really,” I replied, arms outstretched. Isaiah fell into my arms and sobbed. I cried with him.

When I finally got to bed that night, four hours had passed since I followed Isaiah into his room. I got a brief amount of sleep that night. Teaching the next day was easy; I was ecstatic Isaiah was no longer believing a lie, that he was free of guilt. It would be another month before Gabriel hit the wall.

“So, it wasn’t my fault?!?”

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The grieving process is a difficult one. And no two people enter or travel through it on the same path. In our house, I had lost my wife and partner; my 17-year-old lost his mother, champion, and mentor in the mischievous; my 14-year-old lost his mother, world, and Autism whisperer; and my 12-year-old lost his mother, baking mentor, and cheerleader.

All of us have wrestled with this question. Although the outcomes have been similar, the path through the guilt-ridden darkness was nowhere near the same.

What follows is an excerpt from my book Good Grief?!? It is the account of when my oldest first faced the harrowing guilt.

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Fault“Micah, why’d you skip so much school already?” a boy in one of his classes asked him that day. They knew each other from the previous semester, but they weren’t really friends. (Micah had transferred from a private school to an Arts focused, option, public school in the middle of his junior year, and it had been rough.

“There was a family emergency,” he replied, not wanting to get into an emotional loop that might send him home.

“Yeah, right!” the kid snarked.

“Um…right,” Micah mumbled.

“You just didn’t want to come that’s all. Right? Be honest.”

“I am being honest. There was a family emergency.”

“Right!” came the sarcastic reply. “Who died?”

Micah left the room. He didn’t respond to the boy’s taunts. He was upset, and he didn’t think it was anybody’s business he was dealing with his mother’s death.

 

It had been ten days. Ten days full of numb, full of tears, full of silence. My boys had been acting “fine”, telling me a little bit about what was going on at school, but I knew there was something deeper, much deeper happening within them.  I just didn’t know how I was going to get it out of them.

I began praying their faith would strengthen through this nightmare. That they would not walk away from the truths on which they had been raised. I began praying they would have opportunities to honestly deal with their feelings and their pain. Then it donned on me: God, what’s going on with the boys? What am I missing? The answer didn’t come in a whispered response like many had come in the past ten days. It came later that evening, almost twelve hours after I asked, at least for Micah.

 

After his brothers were in bed, Micah and I often talked. It had been a whirlwind type of day. For him, it was the end of his first “week” of school. After five days of school, he was exhausted. He hadn’t talked much to anyone about what had happened. His school guidance counselor knew. His teachers knew. His only friend at the school knew. That was all.

“What’s bothering you?” I asked Micah. We were both standing in the kitchen. It was after 10:00 p.m. His brothers had been in bed for over an hour, and we’d got up from watching some mind-numbing television show to get something to eat. I kept forgetting to eat. Micah had missed dinner, having returned to work.

His response to my question was just raised eyebrows and a cocked head. It was as if he was saying, ‘What do you think is wrong with me!’

“You’ve been acting a bit off tonight. More off than usual for these past few days. Did something happen?”

That’s when he told me about the boy in his class.

“Why didn’t you put him in his place?”

“I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to make a scene.”

“Why?” My tone was probably a little irritated from the boy’s comment.

“Because I don’t want everyone to look at me with pity and feel like they need to feel sorry for me.”

“But, he was being kind of a jerk,” I pressed.

“No, Dad, that’s how last year was. We would harass each other in class. It’s how it’s done at this school.”

“I can sic Lexy on him if you want me too.” I was only half kidding. Micah gave me a faint smile.

“No. If it comes up again, I’ll take care of it.”

We returned to the family room – Micah with a sandwich and I a bowl of cereal. We watched something else that was supposed to make us laugh, and then decided we should try to get some sleep. Walking to the kitchen with my dirty dishes, I felt unsettled.

“Is that all that’s bothering you?” There were immediate tears. I wish I had pressed harder earlier, I chastised myself.

“Um…I just…um…” and then there were more tears.

“Micah, it’s okay to cry. Tell me what’s going on.”

“I just keep thinking…um…well…” He looked me in the eye. I could tell he felt guilty for something.

“It’s okay, Micah. It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to be mad. It’s okay. But it’s not okay to hold onto things. You need to tell me or someone what’s going on.” I was trying to be as gentle as possible. I knew my boy was fragile. Who wouldn’t be?

“I just keep thinking, what if I had checked in on her in the middle of the night.” He paused. “I mean I did get up to use the bathroom. I could have checked on her. I could have called 911. I could have saved her life.” The gravity of that revelation hit me full on in the chest. My eyes watered.

“Micah,” I took him by both hands and stared him straight in the eyes, “when I talked with Mom’s specialist on the phone, he said, based on where your mom was and how she died, he’s pretty sure it was a blood clot. There’s no way to know for sure because there was no autopsy, but he’s pretty sure.” Micah started sobbing, heaving at the shoulders. He covered his face with both hands. I wrapped my arms around him.

“Then it’s not my fault?” he whispered.

“No, this isn’t your fault. There’s nothing that could have been done. If it were a blood clot and she was in the hospital, she would have still died. The monitors don’t usually scan for blood clots. It’s not your fault.”

Micah’s legs ceased working. He began to crumple. Being over three inches taller than me, and a few pounds more, I was struggling to keep us both from falling onto the floor. I didn’t let go. I flashed back fourteen years. Micah was three and he’d been injured pretty badly. I was holding him while he was sobbing. I picked him up and cradled him in my arms for a long time. Then I returned to the present. I couldn’t pick him up. He was a full grown, extra-large, man sized boy with a broken heart.

“I can’t hold us both up,” I whispered finally, wishing I didn’t have to.

It took a minute for Micah to regain his footing. But he didn’t stop crying. We stood in the kitchen for a long time, me still holding my “little boy” in my arms.

“There’s nothing any of us could have done,” I whispered again. We stayed up talking for another half-an-hour. I wanted to make sure Micah had let go of the guilt. I knew it was too much for him to handle. He wasn’t guilty.