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Earlier today, my dear wife Facetimed me so I could see my little granddaughter. My heart leaped to the heavens, and it hasn't come back to earth yet. I hope it lingers there a while.

How I love this little girl.

I've been absent for the last few months because my family has undergone a significant change. I'll share more of that soon, but all is well with our family, and we are writing new chapters of love, hope, and healing. And oh, what a feeling is healing. Most importantly, I'm back and have stories yet to share; stories of the past, observations of the present, and musings over the future.

I wish Mitch could have met my grandaughter (his niece) in this life. He loved kids, and I know he would have adored her. And though little Mitch is a great way off, sometimes I feel his presence close to me, and my heart skips a beat. I close my eyes and thank heaven that our souls crossed paths and that our stars connected. I thank heaven Mitch was my teacher.

I'm still very much a student of grief and growth - and I'm taking careful notes.

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When Mitch was diagnosed, doctors and other professionals warned us marriages in our circumstance (the death of a child) don’t often last. Some were so bold as to say the odds were against us. It would have been neat if some of them said, “But here are some things you can do, or places to go, to keep your family together.” Instead, we received a double prognosis: “Your son will die, and you will probably lose your spouse in the process.”

I lost count of the times I wept at our kitchen table in the middle of the night, pouring over textbooks about my son’s muscle-wasting disease. I was reading books meant for doctors, and they offered brutal, candid characterizations about the realities in coping with progressive neuromuscular disease. I wanted to know the hard truths – no matter how much they hurt. I didn’t care about the scientific jargon many newly diagnosed families cling to. I just wanted to know the hard realities; I wanted to know what the hurricane looked like on the inside so I could prepare my family on the outside.

Fast forward seven years and my sweet son was home on hospice – at least a decade earlier than anyone anticipated. The hurricane I had prepared for never came – and we were met by a tsunami of other troubles. However, the few weeks Mitch was home with us were some of the most sacred moments of my life.

So, when Natalie and I stood in front of each other at our son’s viewing, we faced a new set of challenges. Everything we experienced up to this point was easy compared to what would follow. Even death is no match for grief.

Grief is a long, dark night of the soul. All the Sunday school lessons, derashas, khutbahs, and sermons we may have grown up with may be informative, but they do not take away the pain of loss. Dolling out spiritual platitudes and the casual dismissal of sorrow from people in our respective faith communities only seem to compound the weight of loss.

At one point, I wrote an essay entitled, “When there’s no room for grief,” which explores the often subtle and hurtful ways people respond to those who suffer. At least in my belief circles, the admonition for people to “mourn with those that mourn” isn’t a sticker we put on a fridge or scribble inside our scriptures so we can feel good remembering a phrase. Instead, it’s an invitation to do deep work – and it’s not easy or comfortable. Mourning with those who mourn implies you, too, will taste sorrow.

Over the years, I’ve discovered the beautiful, transcendent spiritual practice of intentional empathy – and what it truly means to mourn with those who mourn. It heals both the sufferer and the person trying to offer comfort. It doesn’t fix everything in a moment, but it does give us a moment to put a broken piece back in its proper place. For many, grief is the work of a lifetime.

Not long ago, I was reading a thread on Mitchell’s Journey. I care a great deal about this community and the burdens everyone carries – and I carefully read all your comments. It’s not my place to weigh and measure one’s suffering against another, and I’ve learned to respect all suffering as sacred. I recall a woman sharing a deep loss she recently experienced and how she didn’t know how to go on. At that moment, I recognized her words as my own at times. I saw a beautiful soul who suffered and, at the same time, thought to myself, “and yet you go on.”

The human story is filled with examples where, despite unimaginable heartache, we go on. We often tell ourselves, “I could never deal with ____.” Until we have to. What I’ve observed talking with thousands of you over the years is the human race is resilient – and we find ways to go on. But we don’t need to travel alone - and when it comes to mourning with others, it seems there are many who talk about it - and precious few who do it.

Just today, I recorded a keynote for a group in Israel who is preparing for a virtual conference in December. I’ve grown to know some of them over the years and admire the good work they are doing to help children who live with various forms of muscular dystrophy. In that address, I said, “I think it’s safe to say I’ve been to hell and back. But I’m back, and I have a story to tell – and that story is happiness is often found where we least expect it.”

Over the next few months, I hope to share stories where our family discovered joy in the in-between, ordinary moments of life and how some of those moments helped me find new ways to face another day … and go on.

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My wife and I went on a wooded walk.

We wandered through the crunchy leaves

and just began to talk.

The air was crisp and fragrant,

rich with earth's deep tones.

If only we could have a bottle,

to keep and call our own.

So there we shared some gentle words

about life and other things.

Then our souls went where words don't exist,

nor can they … not even in our dreams.

It's strange to live in such a place,

where peace and grief reside.

The loneliness of longing

forever at your side.

I saw my wife;

two lives rolled into one.

Arms filled with love and family,

yet empty, in search of our little son.

Yet something happened in the woods last night –

something we didn't quite see.

We knew the season was changing,

but suddenly we realized, so were we.

Grief evolves.

How could that be?

I think I see it now;

it isn't grief that changed, but me.

Yet there is still a deep, dark wood.

A place that is felt, not seen.

Where words of grief and anguish do not exist,

not even in our dreams.

------

[REPOST from 2015]

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Early in my grief journey, I often wondered, “When everything hurts, how will I know I’m healing?”

There was a time, not long after his passing, and for some time after, the very sight of Mitchell’s things was painful to see. I remember his Velcro-strap shoes sitting on the edge of his bed. They were, by design, light as a feather so he could walk more easily. The moment I saw these shoes, they reminded me how difficult walking had become for him. Each step in the hallway at school was a risk; the slightest bump from another child could have sent him falling fast to the floor. Without the strength and coordination to break his fall, he would hit the ground hard. His muscles were getting weaker – and time on his feet more precious. These tender shoes were a reminder of his fragile existence and a symbol of his mother’s love.

When I saw these shoes, I wept like a child. I would have done anything to trade places with him.

Though these shoes were painful to see, for a time, I’m not one to make rash decisions – especially with memories. I could have, like others who cope with grief, swept everything away. I could have swiftly removed anything that might have brought back memories that hurt. While that can be a valid path for some who grieve, I chose a different path. I chose to sit with my pain. I wanted to look at the things that hurt me and healed me, for both are my teachers.

For the first two years, I wept every single day. I didn’t cry. I wept. So-much-so, my lungs were sore and I felt like I had a persistent flu. Every. Single. Day. When we left town, I felt an existential panic leaving my son at the cemetery. It was nightmarish. When it rained, I wanted to race to the cemetery to protect his place of rest. Somewhere deep inside me, I felt a flurry of worry – that if I didn’t have the power to protect his life, at least I could protect him in death. Grief has a way of triggering irrational feelings from a very rational pain.

For me, darkness covered the whole earth; and though I walked among people, I was living in a different dimension. Within the first few months of my son’s passing, I wrote an essay entitled “Walking on Jupiter” where I described the gravity of grief, the thinness of the air, and the difficulty of living. Earth, with all its pedestrian concerns, seemed so very far away. At the same time, I could carry a conversation with a smile … and were I to shake your hand, you probably wouldn’t know the nightmare I was living. Everything hurt.

In private, it felt like I was consigned to an eternity of sorrow. Everything hurt. Even sleep hurt; every morning and night, as I’d drift in and out of sleep, I felt the unbridled panic and sorrow of my son’s passing. It would play out in my mind like a vivid dream and I couldn’t tell if it was happening in that moment or if it happened in the past. There was something about that in-between stage of consciousness that left me especially vulnerable.

It wasn’t long in my grief journey I learned that healing hurts – and that was the first vital step for me. I found if I gave myself space to grieve, the darkness would pass sooner. Moments of acute grief, at least for me, was like a building sneeze: the sooner I let it out, the better I felt. Even still, the general heaviness of grief weighed on my shoulders like a led blanket no matter how much I sneezed.

As far as I can tell, healing isn’t discernable day-to-day. Like getting older or gaining/losing weight, we have to step away from the mirror for a minute. And therein lies the curious paradox of healing: that opposites can be true at the same time.

For example, I’m a believer in living an examined life. That means looking in the mirror and studying what I see, including the things that hurt me. It’s not enough to simply look at our pain, but how we look at our suffering makes the difference. At the same time, I’ve discovered that we must also look away and get busy living. To do one at the expense of the other is to thwart and sometimes deny deeper healing. For me, the choice to look or live has a kind of ebb and flow about it; a delicate dance of the soul.

How do I know I’m healing when everything hurts? I start by recognizing this: if I’m hurting, I’m probably on the path to healing. For one cannot heal without hurting.

The rest is up to me. Sometimes I look, other times I live. Together, they help me heal.