The Four P’s

Pain. Passion. Purpose.

How do we move from experiencing pain, to rediscovering passion, to finding purpose?

And going further: Finding peace?

How is this possible? What might resolution or even redemption look like?

These questions came up earlier this week as I gave a book talk in a neighboring town. My audience was tiny, perhaps in part because of the dreary rainy night and a culminating World Series game on tap. Likely more so because of my difficult topic: helping people cope with grief during the worst trials imaginable.

There is no closure, yet neither am I mired in the past.

Striving to move forward rather than being stuck. Which for some of us involves forging or discovering a new purpose when life as we knew it has been shattered by the death of a loved one.

My wife and I live this. We continue to wrestle with those fierce emotions while attempting to stay on course. Not always sustaining this, but trying again, even when grief sets us back.

The focus of my talk was in part sharing a narrative of how we created a nonprofit bereavement center, Hope Floats Healing and Wellness Center, in 2008, six years after losing our oldest son, Michael.

Hope Floats offers free support groups for grieving families and children in our region south of Boston. It grew from Denise’s vision to help other families in a safe, confidential setting where they are accompanied by those walking a similar road.

Our charity has grown from her setting up a makeshift office, hanging fliers and sending mailings—starting a first support group with about ten women—to more than fifteen free groups. Adults, children, teens, and families gather together to vent, ask questions, and support another for a range of losses: the death of a child or adult caregiver, a partner, a loved one to suicide, overdose, and supporting families who have a loved one undergoing treatment for cancer or a life-limiting disease.

Building from the very ruins. Can this bring solace?

I framed my talk on something I had found reading about Congressman Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, who died a few weeks ago.

In 2016, Cummings was asked about the response of a handful of moms—the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and other African Americans killed by police—who each became activists and advocates.

“Those women were very bold,” Cummings said. “What they did was they took their pain, turned it into a passion to do their purpose…And so, I admire them, because they have taken their pain, and now they’re trying to help other mothers not have to go through what they went through.”

Building from the very ruins. Facing the very forces they believe were responsible for their child’s death. Trying to make meaning from their suffering.

But does this bring solace?

A man in the audience asked if that had worked out for Denise or myself. We lost Michael in 2002. We’re on the cusp of seventeen years as I write, with flashbacks and shards of memories of a mid-November night.

I told him I was at least partway there finding peace. During the first ten or fifteen years I first had to reconcile many things. Learn more about, and open my heart, to forgiveness. Understand the cost of holding on to anger and wrath. Forgive my own faults as a father, and reconcile both some of my guilt and a disabling fear that his unfulfilled life had no meaning.

Fortunately, I‘ve been able to resolve much of this. I’m not sure if full redemption per se will ever be possible, or if that even applies to me. The waves of pain—as other parents expressed to me in my book, Especially for You—have lessened over time. Yet storm surges do occasionally return; they do not relent completely. There is no closure, yet neither am I mired in the past.

For others, finding a new purpose is elusive. The very idea seems laughable.

A man I know, who I will call John, faces many triggers that swirl inside and around him. Sometimes he does not deal with them so well. He often chooses isolation. He has compounding regrets and bitterness after the staggering loss of an only adult child.

John would like eternity to begin any time now, thank you. Still, he’ll do anything for a friend, drop off gifts unexpectedly, even when reeking and unsteady. He is empathetic beyond measure when on. Volatile as a Molotov cocktail when he’s off.

His grief seems to be more complicated, in the fullest delineated or perhaps clinical sense. The intense yearning and preoccupation with thoughts and memories of his daughter seem to dominate life. The future often seems bleak; rage lingers just below the surface. Dysfunction threatens to become the norm.

I wonder for him, and so many others: is peace possible?

Pain? Without a doubt. Passion? Intermittent. Purpose? Struggling to find it.

What’s next?

They have taken their pain, and now they’re trying to help other mothers not have to go through what they went through. — Congressman Elijah Cummings in 2016