Orphan Adrift: grieving the second parent

photo by Alfonso Betancourt @unsplash

In the wee hours of June 16th, a month shy of her 96th birthday and 12 years to the day after her best-friend-for-life, my mother expressed her last breath. When people ask I say she died from old age and self determination. She had a gently accompanied dying-labor with hospice support and a care circle of family and friends. She never wavered in her certainty to let go or regretted her choice for hospice.

When my father died fifteen years ago I learned that once the first waves of mourning calm, you find out its not over. Grief is a long season. No matter how well (or futilely) we accommodate/set boundaries/attempt to contain it, grieving will take as long as it takes and then later it will demand more, too. In my work in end-of-life I spend a lot of time with grieving people; training as a grief educator has equipped me with insight, understanding, and resources to navigate these passages.

And, maybe nothing really could have prepared me for the scope and nuance of experience I'm having as a newly orphaned 64 year old person.

I wrote in a recent post (https://www.dinastander.com/post/how-tight-your-inner-kid-hugs) about encountering my inner child on a little road trip to a place we once lived and bringing her home with me. In the months before - and the days while - my mom died, I experienced a kind of reordering in my own time stream. I let myself be more whole, integrating the crone and the child and every part in between. This was not a plan I had or some woo woo meditation I'd read about. It was a necessity and mostly a surprise. I'm glad there was time for this weaving together because, suddenly, having now lost both parents, my inner child is released from the constraint of their approval. And to be honest the free fall is kinda kicking my ass.

My parents divorced the summer I was 15. Not wanting to live with either of them I left home and hit the road. I didn't run away (carried a notarized letter from dad to prove it). For a year or so I lived at a hippie farm school then hit the road again. Sometimes I circled back to stay with one or another of my parents for a bit, never long. I put a lot of miles between myself and childhood. Over the years I had mostly good relationships with them, and we all worked at getting through the rough patches with mutual respect. None of that complicates my grief, these bits are relatively smooth sailing

.

No, the difficult part is before all that. My inner child who hugs so tight, she is having some feelings. And for the first time ever (EVER) she doesn't have to keep her shit together for someone else's comfort or approval or even for basic care. Her survival is not at stake. She has outlived them. To be brutally honest she is in a prolonged fucking rage. Making sure all that doesn't take a toll on everyone around me is an art. It also requires a fair amount of isolation.

I was expecting the instinct to isolate because I was so efficient at it after my dad died that I lost one of my oldest friends, who took it personally. I am trying to be more careful this time around. That first death-of-a-parent experience, and the shelter I built around myself and climbed into for a few months, were genuinely life altering. I emerged a little more stubborn and self-directed. A little less acquiescent to the family myths. It caused a healthy correction of sorts in my relationship with my mom. I trusted my own story more and became more conscious in the agreements I make.

I'm infinitely grateful I had some practice at constructing a grief shelter before my second parent died. It turns out its still a nifty place for a retreat when I need to hunker down with the sorrows and remember, cry, rage... Or just sit in the quiet and dig my toes in the sand.

I have gotten this far down the page and mostly avoided using the word orphan. Its a big word. We all see the sorrow in it. The loneliness from having loved and been loved and the raw inevitability of being on our own and parentless. And I needed to wait to use the word until after introducing the picture here of the shelter I imagine for myself. A little place with a view of the water and a fire for ceremony. A niche tucked into the vastness of the universe where my inner child can hunker down and roar into the wind, arms outstretched, finding and surrendering her power and finding it again as each wave of grieving comes to shore.

Diving a bit into the etymology of the word orphan, you find Latin, Greek, Old French and Italian origins (being deprived and bereft find their way into the mix too) and then we arrive at the root motion it all makes ~ the idea of passing from one state to another. We think of children as being orphaned but the core truth is this: an orphan is a parentless person, no matter their age. However old we are, we pass from being a person with parents to being a person without. And being without one parent does not feel the same as being without both.

My dad expressed some of this when his mother died. He was about the age I am now. His own father had died before I was born, but when his mother died at 93 he talked about feeling orphaned. I remember the conversation now because we had gone out alone together during a family visit and sat on a bench in the harbor watching gulls and cormorants fishing between moored boats bobbing on the changing tide. He said he felt unexpectedly unmoored by becoming an orphan. I completely missed his point at the time. I probably nodded and said huh. But then it came back to me this week like a gentle hug.

We're taught its rude to speak poorly of the dead and I don't need to say much. My parents loved me but its understood that narcissism can interfere with the capacity to make better parenting choices. I came to accept long ago that neither of them quite mastered the art of prioritizing others. I am humbled to know that our shadows follow us into parenting, my adult self can love them for doing their best and can measure that it was enough. My inner child has other bones to pick and I have to let her have her say.

Heres the thing. I know I'm gonna be adrift for a while yet. I know I have a shelter to retreat to even if its only in my imagination. I trust my friends will be patient with me as I hunker down with my inner child and let her rage and curiosity be important. She brings offerings to burn in the fire of my grief. She brings treasures to delight my heart. I am an orphan. I am not alone. Its going to be ok.

~

This little gem of generous self-acceptance crossed my screen the other day. I'm unsure of its origin but I'm sharing it anyway (leave a note in the comments if you know where its from). It caught my attention because it fits so well with the conversation I'm having with myself(s) while orphaning. My experience of being adrift, this passage from one state of being to another, feels like a precious time even in it's sorrow. When I'm ready to leave the shelter of letting go and becoming, this is the wind of encouragement I'll conjure to fill my sails... And I'll rest assured that my freed orphan inner child and I will be roaring whenever we need to from now on.

yeah, I see the typo too