Sleep, baby, dear

CW: mental illness, suicide

I’ve been to a lot of therapy, with my kids and solo. Therapists often talk to kids about their “lizard brain,” or the primitive fight or flight we revert to when put under stress that shuts down much of our rational powers. It evolved to keep us safe from saber tooth tigers and shit, but nowadays it mostly gets us into shit because modern stressors require all our rational powers and then some.  

Some of us, with mental illness especially, have a really hard time with the lizard brain hijacking our whole body, and consequences can be tragic. Two years ago yesterday, my son Jonathan was in a coma in the hospital fighting for his life because he accidently killed himself the day before when his body was hijacked by the illness in his mind. Medics brought him back to us for a day and a half, and then we had to say goodbye to him again, two years ago today. I know he didn’t want what happened. It’s a long story, but I know. He wanted to live. He had been hijacked before. He articulated after episodes how he felt like someone else was controlling him and he couldn’t stop. But we had always been able to keep him safe till it passed. Until we couldn’t.

Being 14, Jonathan loved to sleep during the day and read and play games all night. This drawing I created is from a photo I took of him one summer morning less than two months before he died. He often got hot in his room and would come out and curl up on the sofa in the living room and there I would find him in the morning with his hair all akimbo looking utterly at peace in positions I would never find comfortable.

I loved seeing him sleeping then as much as when he was a little baby. He had a terrible time sleeping as a baby because he had food allergies and we didn’t know it. We had a Celtic twilight CD that he would listen to as we rocked him and then held him most of the night because he was so miserable. My favorite lullaby on it was called “I’d rock my own sweet childie to rest.”

It starts:

I’d rock my own sweet childie to rest

In a cradle of gold, on a bough of the willow,

To the sho-heen sho of the wind of the west

And the lull-a-lo of the soft sea billow.

Sleep, baby dear,

Sleep without fear.

Mother is here beside your pillow…

The thought crossed my mind once or twice, when I wasn’t trying to get him up for school, that his lizard brain was sleeping and content with no fear or anxiety to launch him into danger. He was safe. Being awake isn’t safe, nothing safe about it. I’ve daydreamed a lot of my life away rather than take actions that I was anxious about, that could go bad, real bad. But living is better than the dreaming. Every little bit of joy we find in the dust is better than dreams. My kids are my joy. Jonathan brought me so much joy, even though a lot of life was very hard at times. His genuine smile and toffee brown eyes awake and alive were my bread and butter and I wouldn’t have traded them for any money or comfort.

I’m gazing at his picture, and the lizard peacefully sleeping with him, wondering if he could just wake up, what would his 16-year-old self be up to this weekend? His body is sleeping under the giant evergreen, and he won’t wake up. There is no more fear. No more danger. No more Jonathan waking up on the couch. And we are less alive than we were for his loss. Two years closer to being with him again.

The Sob

I often feel like I am carrying a giant sob in my chest. It starts in my stomach and wells up into my throat. I feel it behind my eyes. It drowns out other sounds so that often I don’t hear what people are saying clearly, though I can’t think of what sound the sob makes. It’s more of a muffler. Today is one of those days. A local boy missing for two weeks found dead. Horrific footage of war smuggled in a tampon out of Maripul. And the shootings come so close together I can’t process one before another is in the news. I found myself out running errands yesterday looking over my shoulder, checking exits, making mental notes of where I would go if a shooter came into the store. I follow my kids with my eyes as they walk into their schools. And I miss my son Jonathan. I wish I could say I don’t know what bereaved people are going through. I know it isn’t the same for everyone, and sometimes I struggle with guilt over my legitimate feelings. After all, I am sitting in a clean, warm home. I have food, clothing, and safe skies. For now. For now. But I know it can all change in minutes. The “safety” is deceptive.

I grew up practicing for natural disasters. My dad, a naval veteran, worked at a nuclear power plant in earthquake country, and we drilled. We had a rope ladder. We had a wrench stored by the water shut off. We had a giant tub of water in our garage. And we had a shot gun in a location unknown to us kids. But I knew it was there. From a young age I figured that any anxiety I felt meant I just needed to prepare more. How prepared is prepared? For someone with anxiety, you are never prepared enough so you are always anxious. No amount of preparation can ease the anxiety that comes from tragic loss, especially when you thought you were prepared, and it happened anyway.

I’ve been thinking a lot about brains. My brain. My son’s brain. Broken brains. Broken hearts. How brains are like micro earths complete with fault lines and foul weather. Some days I feel like I have an image to offer young people to help them understand their minds, to prepare, practice mindfulness, healthy coping skills, build support systems, all that jazz. I even get excited sometimes and think about whether to create a book for really young kids, or maybe a graphic novel. Then I get slammed with the sob. The sob sometimes lasts for days, and creating is almost impossible. I have brief moments of feeling imaginative, like when the sun peaks out for two minutes on a nasty weekend. I can see a way to go creatively. I sit down to work. But it’s gone. I have to resist the urge to despair. I have to be very careful what I say to my kids so that I don’t say something like, “Nothing we do matters, we have no control, but I love you anyway.” I have to edit myself to the “I love you” bit. Because that is true on all the days.

…

Now it is a few days later, and I’ve come back to this post to finish it. It is seventy degrees, the sun is shining, and the sob has been with me all day. This is not something I can give due time to process and check off the list as done. The sob is like a chronic illness that has no cure because it comes from loss that can’t be restored. It fills a void caused by loss. The hardest thing for me is to be with the sob. I subconsciously try to fill the void with busy stuff, other people’s stuff through my phone. That doesn’t work. The void caused by the loss of someone you love will not be filled with anything but love. The sob is just love bereaved mixed with anxiety for the loves in my life I haven’t lost yet. Grief mixed with anxiety that often gets shaken and stirred.

One of the few things I have found that relieves the sob is laughter. Not positivity, that is usually forced, and not laughter at the expense of others, but genuine humor. Humor is like a happy thought, a wink wink nudge nudge between you and the sob that comforts you and gives you the energy to go on. Sometimes it is just a very little thing mixed with the bittersweet.

I have two pictures of famous sculptures on my studio wall right by my desk: The Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory), and Fallen Caryatid Carrying Her Stone by Rodin. Each sports a word bubble. The Nike says (naturally), “Just do it!” She has been on my wall a long time, but she needed some balance, or her humor feels abrasive. So, the caryatid joined her with the words, “The struggle is real.” It is very difficult to create art around humor and grief; it feels like riding a pendulum. It is difficult to finish a piece as you mentally swing back and forth between the two. But I think that is where I will be for the rest of my life. It isn’t the way I pictured my life for sure.  

Imaging the future after loss

CW: grief. fire. accidents. anxiety. suicide.

In September of 2020, there was a fire storm in Oregon. Some people lost everything. Habitats were lost and forever altered. I lost my 14 year old son. Not from the fires, but the smoke played its part in a terrible tragedy that should not have been his future. Over a year, I still hurt everywhere. Smoke gives me anxiety. Thinking about the future feels like a betrayal to what should have been. As I trudge through the grief stricken landscape of my life, I try to live for my other kids, and for him, to make the world a place where kids can feel they have a future. 

I made this piece as art therapy, to begin the healing of my creative spirit because I could not imagine the future. I stared at the white paper and every image seemed contrived. Until I finally saw the past and future me, a charred tree of life, supporting each other with compassion. On the left grieving for the ashes of the past and on the right being open to the new life that would inevitably and so bittersweetly grow from those ashes. A future that would never have been without the loss. I used a woodburning pen, a new medium for me, and had to wear an N95 mask as I burnt it out. If I make a mistake, it's now part of the plan. 

Grief is very isolating, but I know that I am not the only one. There are millions of people all over the world at this very moment trying to pick up the pieces and build a future. Whatever future humanity has depends on compassion towards ourselves and our neighbor. We must acknowledge and grieve the deep loss of habitats, animals, homes, friends, family, opportunity, time, health, and dreams. Acknowledge the part played by injustice, unfairness, untimeliness. By grieving and owning our past we can build a future, otherwise we are just recreating the past. It won't bring them back. That's the hard part. All the work and we can’t bring them back. Proclaiming, “We can make a better future!” cuts like a knife when those we lost don’t get to be a part of it except through our actions. 

It is a complicated grief and joy, building the future. For myself I couldn't conceive of what to put in the right side of my image besides a few spring flowers, a timid shoot. But I was reminded of my son’s love for mythology, a love we shared, so I put a phoenix into the future. Symbols can be very powerful healing agents. The mess that our planet is in, because of us, is so overwhelming and urgent I get panic attacks just thinking about it. I know we will make so many mistakes as we try to build better. The fear of those mistakes and future loss can leave us petrified doing nothing. Please join me in doing it anyway. And remember compassion. 

Genece Cupp

This piece was the description companion to my painting that was part of the Imagine the Future exhibit at the Philomath Museum, March 2022