capture your grief – day 5: the unspoken

October 6, 2016 / Kade's mom / Leave a comment

Day 5 is a hard one. Here is CarlyMarie’s description:

Normalizing grief is so important and that I why today I am calling upon those who feel brave enough to speak about the nitty gritty side of grief. Share something about your grief journey that you might feel is strange or not common. It might be something you do to remember your children by or maybe it is something you fear about the future. Often while grieving we have feelings of isolation because we fear judgement that what we are feeling isn’t normal. But it is amazing to see just how many people feel the same way. When others stand up and express how they feel through sharing their experiences, it allows us to say “Hey, I feel that way too!” and the fear of feeling like we are crazy is lifted and in some cases embraced!

There is a lot of nitty gritty of grief. It’s all nitty gritty. That will be a good topic to write on when I have more time to delve into it.

For now, here’s a time that comes to mind when I remember thinking, OK, this might be a bit crazy. It was raining late at night, and I was looking at my phone when I should have been trying to sleep. On the radar map of my weather app, I was “cruising around” the Denver Metro area looking at where it was raining. Then I wondered if it was raining on Kade.

I guided the map to the west, and found the windy road that goes to the top of Mt. Lindo. I made it to the top, and found myself with an eagle’s eye view of the mausoleum up there, the parking lot, and the enormous pine tree above his stone. And the scattering garden where we spread some of his ashes.

There are plenty of times when I feel that my actions could be viewed as crazy—not so much to other bereaved parents, but maybe to others. When I do things like visit Kade’s stone on a rainy night via an app on my phone, or say, “Good morning! I love you, Baby!” to a hawk coasting on an air current, I sort of feel crazy…but sort of feel like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

Perhaps leaning a teeny bit toward crazy is taking a screen shot of the top of Mt. Lindo from my weather app, drawing a red arrow to where Kade’s stone is, and posting it here for you to see.

capture your grief – day 4: support circles

October 4, 2016 / Kade's mom / Leave a comment

I can’t say enough about the healing power of a group. The Compassionate Friends chapter meetings that I attend have been a help. (The Compassionate Friends is a nation-wide support for child, grandchild, and sibling loss). It’s good to hear what other people have done in certain situations, and I’ve met friends I can connect with outside of the group.

Early on, I read a book called The Grief Club: The Secret to Getting through All Kinds of Change by Melody Beattie. She lost a son, and has had numerous other losses in her life. It emphasized that you are not alone in what you are going through, even though it might feel isolating. Find those others. There are others. They can offer you the support that no one else can.

A former coworker led me to a smaller group: for moms whose kids died in young adulthood, called Hope for Hurting Moms. It’s always worth the hour drive to let my hair down and be with the smaller group of mamas who get it.

I read another book called Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives. It revealed research that showed that novel and adventurous experiences, which form new neural pathways in the brain, are healing for trauma and grief. This inspired me to start my own little group of bereaved mom friends that I call The Healing Moms. We get out (sometimes a feat in itself) and try new things. Sometimes our new thing is a restaurant we want to check out; this month it’s a hike in Boulder.

The Healing Moms participating in CarlyMarie’s The Mother Hearts “I See You” Project 2016

capture your grief – day 3: what it felt like

October 3, 2016October 4, 2016 / Kade's mom / Leave a comment

At first I thought, How on earth could I relay what it felt like. I thought of words I could use, like horror, pain, and blackness. Severed, distraught, vile, and crippling. Cruel.

Then I remembered something a bereaved mom friend relayed at one of our Compassionate Friends meetings. She told us how she described to a non-bereaved-parent friend of hers what it felt like to lose a child:

She asked her friend,

Do you remember when 9/11 happened? Right after, you couldn’t stop thinking about it…there were no planes flying in the sky…it was surreal…everything was off. That’s sort of the feeling of how life is after your child dies. Like right after 9/11, of everything off, all the time.

capture your grief – day 2: who they are

October 2, 2016 / Kade's mom / 1 Comment

I don’t think it was too long after his death that I asked friends on Facebook to give me one word to describe Kade so that I could make a Kade word cloud. Here it is:

Adventurous is the word that comes to my mind lately. When his friends climb fourteeners in his name I think, THAT is a tribute Kade would dig. He loved the outdoors. Being in the mountains, camping, fishing, skiing, kayaking, whitewater rafting, skateboarding. Didn’t like the city. Didn’t like the heat. Liked mountains, and winter, and cold.

Adventurous.

Today we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Going with my youngest son is certainly sweet. Going without my oldest, is bitter. At the darling wallaby exhibit area, watching young zoo staffers walk past, my dad said, “Kade would have loved working at a place like this.”

Oh.

Daring to imagine my would-be-23-year-old going to work at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo put a lump in my throat and a pain in my chest. He’d look so cute in a uniform. I pictured his excitement telling me about his duties and the animals. I dared to think for a moment of the bright future of an animal enthusiast. The whole day at the zoo had ebbed and flowed with happiness and grief, anyway, as so many things do now.

Oh.

Kade Tyson Riefenberg
So much more than his dates
1/24/93 – 6/29/12
Whitewater rafting guide, fisherman, naturalist, skateboarder, bass guitarist, avid reader, best friend to many, son, big brother, grandson, great-grandson, nephew, cousin.

carlymarie capture your grief – day 1: sunrise dedication

October 1, 2016October 4, 2016 / Kade's mom / 2 Comments

I’m participating in Capture Your Grief for my third October.

From CarlyMarie’s website:

WHAT IS CAPTURE YOUR GRIEF?
Capture Your Grief is a mindful healing project for anyone who is grieving the death of a baby or child of any age or gestation There are 31 subjects, one for each day in the month of October. You are invited to explore each subject and share a photo, artwork, video or written word that captures your own journey. Capture Your Grief is about becoming more present and conscious in your grief experience so that you may learn more about yourself and hopefully discover more ways of healing to aid you in your journey of grief and personal growth. It is also my hope that through the magic of social media you will find and connect with new people and make some beautiful friendships. You can join the project at any time of the month and there is no pressure to take part every single day. You can pick and choose your subjects. So do what feels right for you.

Almost sunrise…

Found my spot, waiting…

I did it. I set my alarm and got up at 6:15 a.m. And on a Saturday. No one in our household could be described as a morning person, but after brushing away brief and irrational thoughts of why I shouldn’t get up (Maybe it’s not safe to be out gallivanting around by myself. What if I encounter a mangy rabid coyote?), I did it.

I am so glad for this prompt to get out of bed, be outdoors in the early morning air, and witness a sunrise. This is the third year I’ve driven to Daniels Park—only about 12 minutes from my house—for day 1.

It was a little cool, though not as cool as other years where I’ve grabbed gloves on my way out. My flannel kept me comfortable (what else would I wear for this?). I heard silence, and birds, and best of all, elk bugling (maaaaybe it was coyotes howling, but I’m pretty sure it was elk). The last time I heard bugling was last fall on a morning hike at the Crazy Good Grief Retreat in Tabernash.

Though no human joined me for sunrise photographs, I wasn’t alone this morning. (Well, I hoped I wouldn’t be quite alone, really). After I planted myself on top of a rock a few moments before the sun would crest, who should meander squarely into my frame, directly between my rock and the rising sun? Two horses. Thank you, grey and white horses for enhancing my sunrise photos today!

Daniel’s Park offers not only rugged high prairie landscape for watching the sun rise to the east…but across the road, a view to the freakin’ Rocky Mountains to the west. After shooting pictures of the rising sun, I drove a few yards, walked to the other side of the road, and shot pictures of the pink new sunlight pouring onto the mountains.

The jagged peaks to the left are Devil’s Head Fire Lookout, a favorite hike

Mt. Evans

I was taken in by the beauty, the stillness, the fresh air, and the alone time with Kade. I couldn’t stop stopping my car, getting out, and taking more pictures as I drove out of the Park.

Downtown Denver in the distance to the right

To see sunset photos from all around the world (it’s really cool!): CarlyMarie Project Heal Facebook Link

To learn more about Capture Your Grief: CarlyMarie Project Heal Capture Your Grief 2016

blogging a – z challenge – “z”

April 30, 2016 / Kade's mom / 2 Comments

Z’s kind of a hard one.

Because his love of animals and trips to the zoo were such big parts of Kade’s childhood, my Z word is zoo. Not terribly creative, but it fits.

I have memories of taking my toddler to the zoo when we lived in Fort Collins, about an hour north of the Denver Zoo. Sometimes we would go with our friends, Mark and Tracy, and Kade’s pal Chloe. Sometimes with another family, Jay and Lucy, and Kade’s buddy Amber. And sometimes with my mom visiting from MI.

The Denver Zoo has special spots in addition to the animals: large metallic animal statues to climb on, an old frontier wagon to get up on and for photo ops, and a place to measure how far you can jump in relation to different animals, like a frog, a hare, and a kangaroo. It was bittersweet to revisit those spots with Asher.

This story is part of Kade Folklore, helped kept alive by my mom: Kade was a good mimic, and would call to the free-roaming peacocks. One time he made his peacock call as we made our way all the way through the parking lot to our car…with a peacock calling back at him, “answering” each call.

blogging a – z challenge – “y”

April 29, 2016 / Kade's mom / 3 Comments

Young. Nineteen is so damn young.

I was shopping at a children’s resale clothing store this week. I saw a young big guy who caught my eye. After seeing him a couple times I wondered if I knew him. When I was waiting in line and he was standing nearby, I asked him his name. Tyler. That was how I knew him–he was a friend of Kade’s since elementary school, who I hadn’t seen in a long time.

I braced myself for him to ask how Kade was and what he was up to. I honestly couldn’t remember if he was at Kade’s funeral. But he didn’t ask. He knew. We chatted about where I used to live when he used to come over, that I moved, where he was living, and where he worked. He told me he was “trying to marry” his girlfriend who was with him. We also chatted about Tyler’s adorable little blond toddler there, too.

I was mostly OK in the store. But the closer I got to my car, and the more intensely I wanted to tell Kade who I ran in to, the more not OK I became.

Around the time I pulled out of the parking lot is around the time the tears came. Tyler looked so young. That meant Kade was even younger when his life ended. No cute toddlers for Kade, or “trying to marry” a pretty girl. No cute grandbabies from Kade for me. And no Kade to for me to call and say, “Hey, I ran into Tyler at the store. He looked the same but taller. His little guy, Carson, was really cute. Did you know he had a baby? Do you talk to him? I remember dropping you off at his house, and him coming to ours. What grades would that have been?”

Before walking into the next store, I texted a fellow bereaved mom, and called my mom, instead of calling the person I really wanted to.

“The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”

~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

blogging a – z challenge – “x”

April 29, 2016 / Kade's mom / 1 Comment

With the letter X, I can see why this exercise is called a “Challenge.”

I scrolled through a list of X-words online. There are a lot I don’t know the meaning of. And a lot that look Chinese! I’ll be using a word with X in it today.

eXtreme:

The word extreme could suitably describe aspects of Kade. His cuteness. His brightness. His inquisitiveness. His silliness. His inappropriateness. His volume. His thrill-seeking. His risk-taking.

He grew up on skis, and skateboarded. He surpassed my skiing abilities by the time he was a little kid. He was a certified whitewater rafting guide, and I heard he was a good kayaker, though I never got to see him at it (what I wouldn’t give!).

When he got more referral slips sent home than any other kid at his elementary school, I wished he was a more moderate type of a kid. When he fractured his foot skateboarding, I wished he was a more moderate type of a kid. When he admitted to experimenting with drugs at a tender age, I wished he was a more moderate type of a kid.

Kade was extreme. His fun, his trouble, his intellect, his experiences, his life, his legacy of being a good friend. My grief, and my love for him, are extreme, too.

blogging a – z challenge – “w”

April 27, 2016 / Kade's mom / 6 Comments

What to write about?

OK, I’ll write about writing.

Writing is an almost magical way to process Kade’s death. Magical because what I start writing often isn’t what I end up with. Themes emerge only after it is quiet, my brain gets focused, my fingers start clicking or my pen starts scratching, and words populate the page. It amazes me almost every single time.

I write in a journal. It was strongly recommended as a release and way to preserve memories in the early devastation after his death. Journaling really does help. Especially early on, I could feel when I needed it; when I was overdue.

I got the crazy idea to write a book. It was after all the grief reading I did, and memoirs I read. When I attended the Compassionate Friends National Conference in July of 2014, and met memoir authors and partook in writing workshops, it sealed the deal. That’s when I got inspired to find a writer’s group and start a blog: first steps in writing and publishing a book.

My first writer’s group was great. Super kind and encouraging women who met at their college and were working on different projects. But unfortunately, we met less and less frequently and then it fizzled.

A friend of mine I used to work with began a writer’s group to finish her horror novel. Yes, a totally different genre…but is it?

She invited me to join her group. And what a group. They’re all fiction writers but welcome this nonfiction memoirist. We meet every week and are currently reviewing the third completed manuscript in the group. It’s stimulating and motivating. Through them I’ve learned of and participated in writing exercises like NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month with the challenge of writing 1,067 words per day in the month of November), the Blogging A – Z Challenge, and workshops, conferences, and contests.

My blog is another writing outlet. It’s a place I can share images, and where I can decide exactly how much I want to share. I can keep these pictures and notes together and maybe somebody could even get something out of them one day. And of course, where the world can see Kade’s smiling face.

AmyJohnnyKadeRockiesGame

blogging a – z challenge – “v”

April 27, 2016April 27, 2016 / Kade's mom / 3 Comments

Vacation.

I’ll tell you some ways I brought Kade on our family vacation.

We went to Mexico over spring break. It was an incredible family vacation. It was the first one that was just us, that didn’t involve visiting other family.

We’d been really sick with flu, bronchitis, and pneumonia in February. A couple of our friends had recent cancer diagnoses. I was about to embark on a three year grad school program with only one week-long break a year. We made a snap decision to go on a beach vacation in Mexico while we could.

I brought my journal and made sure I stole away to write on the beach, all by myself. It’s so important to make the time to “let it all out.” There is a lot of build-up with big events. Even though a vacation is a good thing, even good things are partly sad things without Kade. He should have been part of our family trip. He never went to another country. He would have dug exploring Mayan ruins. Coral on the beach. Fish in the ocean. He has a friend who lives in Mexico; maybe he would have found a way to visit Fernando.

We scheduled a beach family portrait session. I brought a canvas picture of Kade to include in some of the pictures.

SANTOS-51 SANTOS-57

(Although I ran out and need to have more made, and didn’t bring any to Mexico, we leave “Kade stars” in places that we’re particularly thinking of him. They’re wooden stars with “Kade was remembered here” burned onto them.)

We talked about him. I asked Brian if he thought Kade would have liked this, or that. If he would have even come with us, or at 23 years old, might have passed. Brian thought he definitely would have come, which made me happy.

And of course we took the time to write his name in the sand and take pictures–somewhat of a tradition whenever we visit a beach. On mountain hikes, I make his name with sticks and rocks.

It stings when the waves erase his name in the sand.

he wore flannel

honoring my son, Kade, and my grief and healing journey