Chronic Sorrow: Creating Ceremony for Healing

  
          "While chronic sorrow is conceptualized as being normal and understandable, there are no formal and customary social supports and expectations, rituals or recognitions of the catastrophic loss, since the person who is the source of the loss continues to live." (Chronic Sorrow, Roos) This sentence   from my last post on "remembering" echoed in my consciousness.  There are no rituals for chronic sorrow...no baptisms, no funerals, no goodbyes, no parties...Nothing to help the healing and thus sorrow gains the status of "chronic".  That is, unless you create a ritual...personal to each situation.  The following is a brief excerpt from  Sharon's book "Ceramic to Clay" which describes our ritual and shares pictures from the ceremony.  The event occurred in the Summer of 2001, three years after the accident.

How do you move beyond a catastrophic event? Time, everyone says. I was not satisfied with that response. I had an intuitive feeling that we needed to go back to the river. Three years had passed since Adam's near-drowning. He was now 15 years old. Adam was attending my husband’s school; this was the only way I could assure his safety. He was severely brain-injured, tube-fed, in a wheelchair. He was placed in a program for children with severe special needs, and he had Jody, a wonderfully compassionate one-to-one aide who acted like a second mother. Adam needed serious, loving, care-taking. Our daughter, Aimee, now 17, was completing her junior year in high school. I had returned to my job as a high school counselor. 

With help and guidance from friends, we planned a ceremony at the site of the accident. I was prepared for an emotional day, but I could never have predicted the impact of that day on my daughter. 

We began by offering tobacco and honey to the river;
to demonstrate that we knew the river meant no harm!

Aimee sat with us in our living room the morning before the ceremony. Aimee's life as she knew it had come to a screeching halt after her brother's accident. He was severely brain-injured and needed 24-hour care. She handled this with a mixture of anger, disappointment, frustration, and worry. Aimee had held on to her own life with incredible determination; her life was not going to change. She wanted her parents available, our finances solid, and, more than anything, she did not want to feel different from her friends. Aimee consistently challenged the premise that our life could never be the same again.

Our dear friends Terri and Jenny joined us for a quiet prayerful moment before we departed for the river. Terri had created the ceremony and would be facilitating the whole process. We were meeting a large gathering of friends, a few family members, therapists (old and new), and some staff members from the camp. The two counselors who had been supervising the boys the day of the incident had agreed to join us. 

To Aimee, our bright, beautiful, tenacious daughter, almost everything and everyone we had invited into our lives since that day appeared bizarre: the therapies, the alternative medicines, the spiritual practices. 

“Can't you just be normal? Can't you act like you used to? Why do you keep bringing strange people into our life? Isn't there any other way to do this?” 

I tried to understand her feelings. Prior to this life-changing event, my husband and I had not been aware or open to these healing ways. Aimee's continual resistance troubled me immensely. I did not want to lose our daughter while we worked so hard to save our son. 

Aimee invited two friends to join her for the river event. She refused to drive with us. She had chosen friends who might not judge whatever happened at the river that day. In other words, she felt safe with them. 

We arrived at the home of one of Adam's therapists who coincidentally lived very close to the site of the accident. People gathered slowly in front of the house, each one taking a moment to greet our family. Eventually, we formed a huge circle to begin the first part of the planned ceremony. Aimee held back, probably wondering what kind of religion we had converted to—the blessings to the four directions, the prayers, and the burning of sage. I concentrated on the ceremony, pleading for some sense of peace in our life. 

The group proceeded toward the river, singing a song written just for our celebration and gifted to us. 

River, touch our lives today. 

River, touch our lives today. 

Touch the anger and the fears, the guilt and the tears. 

River, touch our lives today. 

River, take them all away. 

River, take them all away. 

Take the anger and the fears, the guilt and the tears. 

River, take them all away. 

River, bring us love today. 

River, bring us love today. 

Bring the healing and the balm, the peace and the calm. 

River, bring us love today. 

Aimee ran to the river, impatient with the procession, not willing to sing. She stumbled down the steep and rocky slope. We had never wanted her to face the scene of the accident alone. It had taken me three years to visit this place, and I had been accompanied by a therapist. Facing the scene, visualizing the accident, had been an overwhelming emotional experience for me. Aimee had no idea what she was about to experience. With the exception of the initial days and weeks following Adam's accident, she had never allowed herself to feel. If she felt sad, bad, or anxious, she could not function, and then she would not feel normal, a condition she would find intolerable. She therefore avoided feeling. Somehow, her stubborn, adolescent mentality worked this out for her. This day, however, would be different. 

When we reached the path that would lead us to the site, we were initially preoccupied with Adam. He had been in his wheelchair during the procession, but now he needed to be carried down the rocky, steep hill and held by the river for the second part of the ceremony. We had baskets of flower petals, each basket symbolizing a different emotion—anger, fear, guilt, and sadness. Phil and I awkwardly held Adam, his rigid body not easily conforming to sitting in front of us close to the shore and not far from the rock that had entrapped his foot nearly three years ago. I held on tight and watched as all of the participants walked in front of us, gathered petals from the four baskets, and offered them to the river with a blessing. 

After some time had passed, I began to search for my daughter. I found her standing away from the group, sobbing intensely. I left Adam with my husband and gathered her into my arms. 

“Mom, I hate this; I just want to leave. All of these people are weird. This whole day has been awful. I don't want to do this.” 

A bouquet of flowers had been set aside for our family, the same type of flowers used in the ceremonial baskets. I gathered them, took Aimee by the hand and brought her to the river's edge, and said through my tears, “This is how you can make peace with the river, the accident, and the huge changes in your life. This is what you can do because you miss your brother. Take these flowers—your anger, your fear, your guilt, and your sadness—and offer them to the river. The river never meant us harm. The river held your brother and brought him back to us.” 

With my arms around her, I watched as Aimee gently tossed the flowers, one by one, into the rushing waters. For one moment, one beautiful moment, Aimee joined us, no resistance. She allowed herself to participate in not only her brother's healing but also her own.

And so, ceremony is created for healing chronic sorrow...and must be re-created over again (still working on this).  To conclude with the amazing...after trying for several years to sell our house in Greenfield, we learned upon re-visiting the site of the river and the ceremony on the 9th anniversary date of accident, that the house sold.  Our broker called us on the afternoon of July 24, 2007...at the river with the news.  So, the Universe does care for its own.
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