When early childhood grief intrudes

I slammed my bike helmet down on the table, loudly lamenting Esmerelda’s demise. “Of course, she’s dead. Why should I be able to have something like that!”

I shed my bike gloves and ranted some more.

I watched myself and said to myself:

What are you, four?

I had bought an e-bike with our retirement-year tax refund. She was a purplish-blue beauty I had waited 3 weeks for. I could have immediately brought home a white e-bike or an icky brown one. But no, I waited for her. Our first ride was exhilarating. I could go up hills with ease and the joy and freedom of bike riding from my younger years returned.

One day later, however, after charging her up, maneuvering her sixty-pound frame to the driveway, I hit the power button and nothing happened. Dead. To quote Scrooge, Dead as a doornail.

Now, it might help to know that just a few months earlier we had a similar incident. We had put a lot of money into our old truck to pull our new-to-us trailer. After coming back from the repair shop the truck worked well for two days and then began having the same problems as before. The mechanic now said it needed a new engine.

It’s an old truck, not worth a new engine. I have many thoughts about this whole situation which have not been helpful for marital happiness. Suffice it to say, I have a trailer for retirement camping but nothing to pull it with. I have a dead truck.

Now I have a dead bike.

And I’m acting like a four-year-old having a tantrum.

When you are writing a blog on inner healing, you don’t get to just ignore these coincidences. Why do dead things upset me so much. Why did I say four-year-old? It didn’t take very long to make the connection.

Connections

When I was three-months old my father died of a sudden onset brain hemorrhage, probably an aneurysm.

My grandmother, Nana, had been widowed, and remarried a kind man I called Gampa.

He and Nana were very special to me and were the only grandparents in my life.

Though I wasn’t blood, he claimed me as his own and I adored him. He and Nana used to watch me after dad died, while mom worked in the restaurant they had owned together.

I was only a year old when mom married my step-father and the chaos truly began.

In the meantime, my grandpa worked kitty corner from our house. He and Nana were building a house on the coast, about an hour away. On Fridays, I would get ready, with my little suitcase packed and wait for him. He would stop and pick me up. We had a little routine we went through. I’d ask if I could come with him and he’d say, “I don’t know, we better ask your grandma” and take me with him.

One Friday, a few weeks before my fourth birthday, I waited on the porch with my suitcase.
I don’t remember how long I waited.
I only remember that he never came.

My Bridge Was Gone

My grandpa worked for the State Highway Department. One of his duties was operating a mowing tractor. That Friday he was mowing along a highway when he was hit by a large truck and died on scene.

I know how my family never dealt well with the death of my own father. I never even saw a photo of him until one day my aunt heard that and slipped me a photo.

In our unhappy household, my mom used to drink and cry in the late evenings. I somehow knew she was pining over my dad.

As an adult, I understand and empathize with my mother’s grief more than I once did. She never fully grieved the loss of her soulmate and wasn’t able to help her girls grieve either.

Which is why I am almost positive she did not sit me down and try to explain what had happened and why Gampa was not coming. Would never come.

The man who had been my bridge from my Daddy to a place that was unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Gone.

Tracing Their Names

We would go out to the cemetery on Memorial Day and lay out flowers for my dad and my grandpa. I knew they were dead as I traced their names with my finger on the bronze memorial markers. That was how I connected to them as I grew up.

Had I known how much their lives really mattered to me?
Or just the loss of what I never had?
The weight of how different life could have been…

And how important it was to have Gampa there in those first years of my life when dad couldn’t be.

Don’t try to tell me it was God’s will or God’s timing. Maybe. Could be.
That is not going to comfort me in ten thousand years.

I do know it was not God’s best for my mother to marry my step-father.
But desperation, grief, and the loss of self-confidence, perhaps even the loss of faith, can lead to very bad decisions.

Knowing that God is my Father helps temper the grief.
And the older I get, knowing I will meet them in heaven sooner than later brings heavenly daydreams to mind.

But for now, throwing a tantrum at dead things, like a four-year-old, tells me something.
Not that I need to grow up and face the hard facts of life. Probably true.
Not that I need to confess my sin and try to be a better person. Also true.
Not that I don’t have a flair for dramatic despair. Obviously true.

But that I have a deep well of grief that has been untapped.
I have tears so deep they have not been shed adequately.
I have work to do.

And I know just the Father who will cry with me.

If you have any questions or thoughts, please feel free to comment below. Comments are moderated for safety and respect, but I’ll read each one.