Sadness: Call to Adventure

by Linda Cochrane

It was Easter weekend nearly two years ago when my heart broke open to a place I had never been. Four of the people so dear to my heart came to our home for a visit. My brother, Dan, had told my niece, Christine, that visiting me was on his bucket list. Christine, along with her beloved Julie made the 8-9 hour drive from California to our home in Oregon. It was touch-and-go as to whether my sister-in-law (and decades long dear friend), Paulette, could summon the strength to pull herself through her tunnel of despair to join us. I remained hopeful while I cleaned the house, set the table with my sparkling polished silverware, and my mother’s best linen tablecloth, embellished with handmade lace. I made lasagna and salad for dinner, and set the fireplace aglow. My excitement was hard to contain. I became so hyper I had to take several breaks to dance in our kitchen to the song “Celebration”, doing all sorts of random moves to attempt release from my over arousal. 

When they arrived that Friday evening - all four of them, it was the beginning of my best and most emotional Easter ever. As I opened the front door to possibilities, their bright faces mirrored my joy. I was trying to contain my giddiness. This is maybe the safest love group you’ll ever know, so I’m pretty sure that the need to contain my emotions came from childhood PTSD where there was an ongoing requirement to shut up and make things look good.

I hadn’t seen my beloved brother, Dan in over a year. The progression of his Parkinson’s disease (PD) was something my mind couldn’t prepare me for even though I had kept aware of his decline. In spite of his severe physical limitations, his heart and his wit were blessedly alive. When I told him how much it meant to me to be with him, he smiled and mumbled, “Me too”. I was feeling my way through this combination of a huge love-fest going on inside and outside of me, along with a sadness so huge I struggled to contain it. My brother was dying in a slow motion kind of way. Many of us live long enough to do some version of this, but we can’t actually see the inside speaking so loudly on the outside. Dan has a gorgeous way of communicating matter of factly about profound things. His ego is that small. This gift of his has always helped me to accept what is.

The next morning I came downstairs seeing my husband, Chuck, and my brother sitting in the living room on the love seat. Together. Saying nothing, but speaking volumes. Later I asked Chuck how long they had been sitting there, and if they conversed at all. “Over an hour, and we didn’t need to talk. I just needed to be close to him and love him”, was his reply. That was the first time of many over the three day weekend that I scurried into the bathroom to sob.

It’s challenging to tell you only a fraction of all the love that occurred that weekend in one page. I experienced deep sadness and feelings of helplessness witnessing the expressions of Dan’s disease. The gift is that it completely broke my heart open to release long held grief, not only around the ravages of his illness, but also around the cuts and bruises in my own life history that I thought I was done with. I cried hard off and on all weekend, mostly in the bathroom and in bed. This acknowledgment and release of sadness carried on for five months. All the while I was saying “thank you”, acknowledging the joy I felt to love someone so much.