Grief and the Tear-Drop Stuffy

September, 2013

Amy Carpenter

"To feel everything within the self, and everyone as the self, is to be fully alive!”

                      -Julianne Everett  (Heart Initiation)          

When confused, write.  This has been my personal mantra and frequent advice to clients who have found journaling helpful in their lives. Still, I could not have anticipated how pertinent that advice would be right here and now at this blog’s entry point. The idea for a blog site began with our upcoming trip to India, and a desire to share aspects of preparation (inner and outer) for this long-awaited spiritual adventure.  I decided to entitle it “journeying” - a discussion springboard for other types of travel, emotional, psychological and spiritual that we all find ourselves facing in life, whether we want to or not.  As it turns out, I now sit here at my desk feeling nothing but sadness and bewilderment, wearily hoping the mantra will stick.  

Last weekend, a massive car collision in Belfast took the life of our teacher, just weeks after her husband died of respiratory illness in late June. My daughter’s class, the 6^th grade at Ashwood Waldorf school, have had Ms. Kalmath as their teacher since the first grade. On the night before the first day of school this year, Anikka learned her teacher was dead.

Having worked with grief and loss, I know what to expect as an emotional aftermath of such tragedy.  Being a long-time Waldorf-Mom-Wanna-Be, I know how to enlist the beauty of the magical realm to comfort a child, reminding them of the power of angels who now hold their loved one in a place of peace.  I know that metaphorically the shades are drawn and the house grows quiet for however long it takes to start feeling a bit of normalcy, or joy again.  What I didn’t know, or perhaps forgot, was just how strong the basic human need for structure, community, and tangible comfort is in the face of such devastating tragedy.  When Anikka first heard the news, she wailed for a long time, she wandered around the house, wanting to be hugged, then wanting to be alone.  Duane and I stood like tin soldiers, numb to our own needs, waiting to tend to whatever she might ask for, praying to find the right words for the hard questions.  In the end, what Ani did was very simple. 

Enlisting our help, she took all of her stuffed animals (along with every miniature creature she could find in the house), placed them in two huge garbage bags and brought them upstairs to the living room.  There, she re-assembled all the animal-life, large and small, into a “stuffy circle”, crawled right into the middle of it and lay silent in the fetal position for the next twenty minutes.  There was only room for one person or I would have joined her.  But it wasn’t my circle.  Anikka knew what she needed and once she gave it to herself, it was enough. The next day, she packed her new messenger bag full of paper and pencils, and headed off to school.

In my humble Waldorf-Mom-Wanna-Be mind, Ashwood was never more glorious than it was on that 1^st day of school, the day we all mourned together for Ms. K.  In the morning, the 6^th grade, along with their parents and a few grandparents, met for tea in the classroom to talk about the special memories (mostly humorous) we saw represented in the items she left behind. We held hands and shared these with each other as we laughed and wept. Later, the entire school community ended the day early and met at the great Ash tree in the center of campus. The children of the school placed flowers, rocks and special trinkets at its base. We then formed our own sacred circle, holding hands and walking round in a silent, teary spiral across the adjacent field.   My neighboring hand-holder was a kindergartner who wore a bowler hat and a suitvest. Without turning around to look at me, he simply took hold of my hand and pulled.  He didn’t let go until we were out of the spiral and across the field.  I thanked him as he walked away, still never seeing his face. Afterward, there was nothing more any of us needed to say or do. It was complete.

Anikka hasn’t sobbed or wailed since that first night.  I think she knows Ms. Kalmath is safe in the arms of the angels and her beloved husband.  She knows she herself is held in the arms of her family and the larger school community. Last night, being a self-declared therapist-in-the-making, she told me her plan to build a new kind of stuffy, in the shape of a tear-drop, with the words “feel the rain” across the front. “Get it, Mom?,” she asked, “It’s a water-drop with ‘Feel the rain’ on it, like ‘feel the pain’?”

“I totally get it.” I reply.  “I would buy one.”

The stuffy circle remains in our living room, and may be with us for a while. As a class and as a family we are still stunned and sad, and will be for weeks to come.  I myself am hoping to get just one decent night’s sleep in the next several days.  But one thing is for sure; with every hug we get, and every encouraging text and email, I know how very un-alone we are.  And how, in the wake of tragedy and loss, we really do receive unexpected things that are very soft and open, like the sweaty squeeze of a five-year-old’s hand, or the cuddly warmth of a tear-drop stuffy.

Ironically, Ms. Kalmath was from Bangalore, India, a region we will travel near this coming January.  Her family there are waiting for the necessary Visas so they can come and bring their sister home.  The students of the 6^th grade, with the help of their new teacher, will make a book for the family to take back with them. Many of the pictures and memories of dear Ms. K. will be in it, so her people in India will know just how treasured she was.  Both countries will hold their ceremonies with the scattering of ashes, literal and metaphorical, as we try to say goodbye the best we can.  The circle expands, changes form, and goes on…

Of course, only the children know that these are grown-up matters, grown-up ways to create comfort as necessary and important as a stuffy-circle.  The reality is that the love their teacher had for them lives on in every mathematical equation and carefully-crafted sentence.  She touches their spirits each time they paint a beautiful picture or wrestle with social conflict, asking themselves the very difficult questions of how best to respond to challenge.  What is right, what is wrong, and what would Ms. Kalmath say?