The Best Cheeseburger in Heaven

This is another departure. It has nothing to do with New Mexico, other than happening while I am living here. Just life--in all its strange, heartbreaking sweetness.

June 3, 2022

I am a grief counselor.

I help people walk through the darkest days of their life. I bear witness to their suffering. I help them feel a little less alone. I help them face their grief, and lose their fear of it. I give them a safe space to cry, to rage, to share all the unlovely things that we can become when we are suffering—and help them understand that every single one of those things—no matter how unlovely--is OK. Normal. Their inner truth of the moment. Not good or bad. Just real. A starting place for trying to find their way back to the light. If we are very lucky, my bereaved moms and I, together we find a path forward. To the rediscovery of some kind of life worth living after this unspeakable thing that has happened to them.

There are things I do not do. I don’t tell them it will be OK, because I don’t know that. I don’t tell them that their child is in a better place, that I know just how they feel, that God has a plan for them, or that time heals all wounds. Maybe those words help some grieving people. But I have yet to meet one. Above all, I do not try to fix anything. That’s not possible, and it would be utterly egotistical of me to think otherwise. I am a companion. They are the ones who are doing the hard work.

Like a lot of us who are not trained psychologists, becoming a grief counselor happened to me because I had a grievous loss of my own. My son Carson, dying at age 20 of pneumonia. In the mind chaos that followed that, I kept reading, seeking. Looking to others who had lost children and trying to figure out: How are you standing here in front of me—two months, two years, five years later? I am not sure I will make it to the end of this day. How do you do this? Live in a world without your child?

Everybody seemed to have created some exquisite memorial to their lost loved one. A foundation. A non-profit. A book. A retreat. A wildly successful fundraiser, political career, tribute golf tournament or fun run. Some public event to fight the plague that claimed their loved one.

But. What kind of memorial would suit Carson? The quicksilver, kind, maddening, funny, risk-taking, intuitive streak of light that raced like a comet across my sky and disappeared too soon. I tried and discarded a lot of things. And then, I knew. I would help others like me who walked this path. I would do it in Carson’s name. I would do it with him on my shoulder.

And I do. Every time I meet with a new client, I start by listening deeply. And then, even though they do not know it, I have a little talk with Carson. What are we going to do to help this mom, Snookie? What does she need? I’ll take her, and you take her son/daughter, OK? Help orient them to where you are now; show them the ropes. They are the rookie, and you are the veteran. So help them adjust, OK? Show them how to do things; where all the best spots are. Who in heaven makes the best cheeseburger.

Sometimes, when the time is right, I even tell my mom/client about this piece of whimsy of mine. Usually, it seems they take deep comfort from the idea. We all just want to know our kids are OK.

Early this morning, my brother Dave died. He had a catastrophic stroke last weekend, and this outcome was expected. He was 70. Seems young to me now. But he had a lifetime of health problems that compromised him; made this end while shocking, not completely unexpected. Like Carson, Dave was kind. He had an essential sweetness about him. It wasn’t always on the surface. You had to look past the risk-taking, the maddening, the incomprehensible; the self-destructive choices that come with a disease we don’t quite understand yet. He was a talented carpenter. He was great with his hands. He made beautiful things. Dave did the last remodel on our house, and the place I live is marked by all his good ideas. I think about them every time I walk into a room that he envisioned. Dave was badly damaged, at age 16, by the death of our mother. It was a time, at least in my family, when loss demanded stoicism and silence. Whatever demons visited us after Mom died, we didn’t talk about it. I can see now how badly Dave needed to talk. In some ways, he never made his way back to the light after that.

A beautiful soul. Gone from this world. The cliché “rest in peace” seems perfect here. I have already spoken to Carson about greeting his uncle, showing him the ropes. Carson will love this. Being the guy in charge—his 27 to Dave’s 70.

This is the first close loss I have had since becoming a grief counselor. Today, I will need to try remember words I say to my clients. Think of the love. Think of the sweetness. Be good to myself. Talk a walk in the sunlight.

I am a grief counselor. Today, I grieve.