This is my parents and me at my graduate school graduation in the spring of 2004.
rachel martin
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rachel martin
This is my parents and me at my graduate school graduation in the spring of 2004.
rachel martin
Two years ago, my father was in the ICU of a Salt Lake City hospital. He was transferred from a hospital in my hometown of Idaho Falls, Idaho, because his aorta had ruptured and a more experienced surgeon was needed.
My brother, sister and I went on a plane with him, and after a few days, the signs were looking good, he looked at us and said with a deadpan expression, “What are you still doing here?” I’m fine! Go!”
So we all kissed him on the cheek and went to our respective homes. He died a few weeks later.
Our father, Stephen, was the parent who was supposed to be there for a while. It’s not like he was young. He was 74 years old. He has a very good life. But he was in great shape. He weight-trained almost every day and had no serious health problems, so when he passed away, we felt like we had been robbed all over again.
Our mother Linda passed away from cancer in 2009. She was only 60 years old. She passed away before I met her husband. She never met our children. It felt like her life had been interrupted and cut too short by a meaningless illness for a woman who was herself so full of life.
I told myself that since God or the universe or something had taken my mom away so quickly, I would definitely stay with my dad until he was limping around the house like the old man he was supposed to be. I was there.
That didn’t work.
It’s strange to be an orphan as an adult. I know I have to focus on how lucky I am to have had my parents for this long. But when my 9-year-old son takes a hit in a little league game, I still feel ripped off and want to call his father and get the play-by-play. Or when my 11-year-old son makes a fuss by singing and dancing in the kitchen, I can’t help but send the video to his mother. Because her mother would love it and her mother.
But it’s deeper than that. After his father passed away, I felt an existential emptiness. Both he and my mother lived rich and fulfilling spiritual lives. Now that both are gone, I realize I never made it for myself. And I was filled with questions about whether I needed to do this in order to live a meaningful and happy life.
Last spring, I set out to answer that question by talking to a number of different people who were swimming in the same murky existential waters, but who had emerged with some kind of clarity. I started trying.
One of the first conversations I recorded for this series was with my siblings, Abigail and Paul. I wanted to ask them directly about what they believe and how it has or has not helped them overcome their own grief. We saved the conversation for a while because it was so personal. But now I feel it’s okay to share it with the world during the holidays.
I’m not in the same emotional place I was 8 months ago. I’m much more comfortable not knowing. I’m finding new meaning in my work, community, and family. I no longer feel empty.
But this conversation captures the situation for me, my brother and sister, at a particular point in time. And I think it’s a level of honesty that the three of us have never shared before.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rachel: The first question is, we know the answers to some of these questions, but how about you define spirituality for your father and mother?
Abigail: My father always seemed to be very practical regarding spirituality. Like, he was all about the Bible. He didn’t take the Bible literally, but he was really true to what he believed. Sure, he would have been open to conversations and challenges, but his mom has changed. When we were little, I never thought of her mother as such a die-hard Christian.
Rachel: She was a dabbler.
Abigail: Yeah. Past life…
Rachel: right! Reincarnation, a little meditation.
Abigail: And when she got sick, everything changed. And she became more in line with what her father believed.
Pole: I agree that my father probably had a more strict view. He was of the Presbyterian tradition and earlier Baptist. He was studying all the other religions, but at arm’s length. On the other hand, when her mother was studying other religions, she accepted the possibility that there were common values, common connections, and philosophies that connected her spirituality with people of other religions.
Rachel: Yeah. It was like an intellectual exercise, like when Dad studies other things. On the other hand, my mother studied with the eyes and heart of a practitioner. Maybe she intended to incorporate that into her own faith.
Pole: Yeah.
Rachel: So do you believe in God?
Pole: i will do it. Yeah. I don’t believe in a God who points his finger at the sky like the Sistine Chapel. I think my dad’s and mom’s deaths made me go through a process of understanding, or to think critically about what I believe, because it’s no longer a theoretical thing. Of course, I thought about it when I lost my grandparents, but when it comes to my mom and dad, I think about where they are every day. what happened to them?
Therefore, it must be handled differently. Some adaptation was required. When I think about what God is, I realize that it is radiance and that what makes us unique is what we all share. I think it resonates through many different religions, and I think there’s a lot of commonality in that concept. So, while my belief in God came from the Christian tradition, it certainly encompasses the idea that energy is special, that it is within all of us, and that we all share it. I am.
Rachel: Do you think your father and mother had to die for you to be able to understand what you just said? To come to the conclusion of what God means to you?
Pole: I think it’s always been there because we’ve been taught about other religions and other ideas. We were never told that other religions were wrong and it was not part of our upbringing. So it’s a process of thinking critically about what I believe, and that was facilitated by their deaths.
Rachel: Abi, do you believe in God?
Abigail: Hooray. I was so angry after her mother died. Towards the end there was a lot of discussion about her faith in God and her father’s faith in life after death, but I still can’t understand why such a good person was taken from us. you can’t.
Going back to what Paul was saying, I believe in energy. Because too many coincidences occur for some kind of force not to exist. I’ve had some really cool things happen with birds. And the bird, as we know, belonged to mom.
Rachel: She felt a deep connection to birds, especially seagulls.
Abigail: So, I had a situation where I thought maybe there was a God. Maybe there’s something. But when her mother passed away, I completely shut down and cut it off. And when my father passed away, it felt like we were going through a hard time. Using the language he had, the language we grew up with, those traditions.
Prayer is not something that happens in my life. Sometimes I think I should pray. Because that’s what we were taught to do. But yeah, there’s a lot of anger and sadness about it. Because I don’t have that spirituality, so I feel like I’m missing something. I don’t know if this word is correct. But God is not present in my life. And I feel like there’s a hole.
Rachel: Yeah. Understood. The way I’ve been explaining this, it’s like mom and dad built this scaffolding, this spiritual scaffolding. They have given us a foundation built like an outer beam of what spiritual life is like. And it was in a sense up to us to build the rest of our spiritual home.
And I feel like I never really understood that part. They had such a rich faith and strong religion that I didn’t feel any need to do that kind of work. I could have retreated, or I could have taken refuge in their faith. And bail.
So when they die, only that scaffolding remains, feeling unstable and empty. I feel like there’s nothing there and I have to fill it up, but I don’t really know what to do because I don’t think the faith we were raised in will give me everything I’m looking for. . Do any of them make sense to you or do you think they are true?
Abigail: yes.
Pole: Well, the idea that we are the beneficiaries, or that Mom and Dad tick that box and have a tent that we put in, resonates. It has to be personal, so at some point it’s up to you, right? Losing your home base is a sudden change.
But that doesn’t mean you have to meet everything. I also don’t think it’s bad or terrible to not fully set up the tent as soon as Mom and Dad are gone. Because it’s supposed to last our whole lives. Therefore, we can always work from our tent.
Rachel: Thank you for expanding on the metaphor. [laughs]
Pole: That’s a good metaphor. I like that.
Rachel: Do you remember when mom was sick, she started instilling in our minds the idea of living in the wind? That’s why she gave us this beautiful wind chime. And since I’m on the phone, the wind will blow and I’ll think about her.
This is a story that helps us think about what happens when our loved ones are no longer here. Religion primarily plays such a role for people and helps us understand that question. What did you all think about it? Do you believe in life after death?
Pole: Well, you know, dust to dust. I believe that energy returns to the universe, just like the laws of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. I mean, I believe in life after death, but I don’t think it’s a world where you have a home and lots of dogs, friends, family, and toys you want.
That’s not something we can really think about. I don’t really try to define what the afterlife is. I think there are limits to our abilities.
Rachel: Abi?
Abigail: I want to. I want to believe that there is a life after death. But the answer would be no. I think there’s something. There’s energy. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not like mom is in heaven having a dinner party with dad and grandparents. It makes no sense to me logically. what about you?
Rachel: Oh, me? I don’t know. I think a lot of religious inquiry stems from people trying to understand death, dying, its horror, and its uncertainty. Also, parenting is something you have to explain to your children, right? Am I really telling them that there is a place called Heaven where Ima and Daddy are?
Pole: So we’re thinking about whether people have graves, whether they’re cremated, and what to do with the remains. A lot of it is for survivors, right? And you can help survivors do it the way they need to.
And for those left behind, it feels like the concept of heaven, hell, or an afterlife is once again for the survivors. And if we need it as survivors, we have all the memories and things that our parents gave us, which, by the way, we’re lucky to have. I mean, we had a real life with our parents.
Rachel: Yeah.
Pole: We can express them ourselves and have them with us whenever we want.
Rachel: I like that idea.
Pole: We have heaven in our pockets.
Rachel: what? Did you just think of that?
Pole: Hooray.
Abigail: That’s okay, Paul.
Rachel: That’s nice! Hurry up and write! [laughs]
