I went to look at a camper today. To lease, 6 months at a time with option to buy. I can’t go home. I’m afraid if I go there, I’ll never come out. Literally or figuratively, I’m not sure. I just know it’s the wrong thing to do. At this point I’m just trying to stay alive because I believe them when they say I’ll feel better. I have to believe them.

I’m squatting in M&D’s extra bedroom still. I’ve been here since the day Ben died.

I feel like a great big lump of grief that moved in and never left. I know they need relief from my constant pain. *I* need relief from my constant pain. But I’ve invaded their home, their sanctuary, where they go for relief. And wherever they turn, there I am. I know it hasn’t been easy for them. I ran away from my home and the worst place of my grief. Where do they run to? There’s nowhere to go. I try to be sensitive to privacy but I still manage to plop on their bed much too late at night to talk about how •I• feel and how I’m coping. I forget to ask them how they feel and how they’re coping. Grief is one massive ball of selfishness wrapped in misery. It sucks the life out of everyone near it.

I can’t get the thoughts of Shidu Fumu from my mind. I’m not the only parent who has lost their only child. There are others out there like me. I want to find them. Ask them questions. The only information I find is in Chinese. The one child policy has created many Shiduers. In the rest of the world, we’re a rarity. I don’t want to be a rarity. I want a manual. How do I do this? What steps do I take? Pray sixteen times a day. Say six Hail Marys. 856 push ups. Take a trip to Borneo. Start a school for pygmies. All of the above. Just tell me… what do I do to feel better? I need the instructions!!! And nobody has written them. There are thousands of books on grief. Even a couple directed at parents who’ve lost children.

I’ve been working my way through them, but so far there are no answers, just “hang in there” tips. I don’t want tips! I want THE MANUAL! I suspect I’ll read every grief book ever written. Maybe one of them will be “the manual” but I’m not feeling hopeful. Most don’t even promise it in their introduction. They use words like “helpful, insightful” None of them use the word manual.

My daily routine is Mama and Daddy’s routine. I follow them around like a duckling behind her Mama. I brush my teeth in the morning. I wash my face and put on clothes. I even wear a bra. My least favorite thing, around the house. I sit at my computer and file PO’s for AT&T environmental compliance work. I feel briefly thankful I don’t work with the public as tears slide down my face, visible only to my monitor, which stands in mute disapproval of my jagged work hours. Shattered. The word floats to the surface just after I’ve beaten back the word ashes.

Where are his ashes? My child. My son. My imperfect angel. He’s been gone since April 19th and I still don’t have his ashes. The funeral home attempts to explain yet another delay. Covid is mentioned. If there’s one word I’ve come to hate, it’s that word. Not only am I in mourning, I’m also in quarantine. Unable to hug anybody but those in quarantine with me… meaning my older parents. My father is deathly afraid of dying. A fear I no longer share. And he looks at me quizzically when I state it as frankly as I know how without mentioning the word suicide. A taboo. But I no longer fear death or dying. I still fear suffering, but I’m not sure how much worse it could be than this, so… yes, I’m done with quarantine.

But he doesn’t feel the same way and it’s his household and I’m squatting in it, so I have to respect his feelings and quarantine with them. Did I mention I cannot go home? So where else do I go? I don’t know. So that’s how the camper idea came about. I can be CLOSE to them, following their daily routine but not on top of them, meaning I can see my grandson and smooch his precious face. My Blessing from Ben in this world.

Wait… I need to back up there lest the unnamed one takes from me again. Maybe I’m supposed to name him. I’m not sure. My religious instruction is rudimentary. But I do know the evil one exists and is in a fight for my soul, which he lost badly this round.

My anger at God gave him a foothold which he took advantage of. Emboldening me to speak harshly of the father I’ve always turned to in times of trouble. To doubt his love. To doubt his very existence. I’d been struggling with it since Ben passed. It made no sense to me. How could he do this to me? I have no other children to help give me a reason to live. Not even a husband to hold my hand and grieve with me. Why would he do this? How could he do this? What kind of monster must he be? Is it all just bullshit? Words written by people to pacify the proles? I questioned. I suffered.

I took long rides in the woods to find a secluded spot and holler at God. Demand answers. Beg. Plead. Cry. Promise. Threaten. Question. I got no answers beyond the wind in the trees. Rough comfort. 

Then one night I woke up crying at 3am. The crying turned to sobs and finally the low keening wail only those in grief understand. I was keening quietly into my pillow so I didn’t wake M&D. I was not praying, I did not know what to pray for. I wasn’t even sure he was there to listen. My keening turned to words. Words I’ve never heard before. Words I couldn’t understand. They poured out of me like a lament, but staccato, pronounced and definitively clear. They were not the tongues I’ve heard spoken in church the few rare times I’ve attended Pentecostal services. The words were not rhythmic at all. No shalala or shanana. It felt like speaking a distinct but foreign dialect. My intonations changed with the words. Sometimes rising, sometimes falling. Sometimes sharp and angry, other times sorrowful and broken. A whole conversation poured forth from my mouth to another heart. With words describing my grief that I’d been unable to conjure up in three weeks of trying to describe how I felt. There are no words in the English language to describe what it feels like to lose your only child. None. But this “grief language” contained EVERY word I needed to describe how I felt. It shocked me but did not frighten. I felt unburdened. Finally I could express exactly what I was feeling with this outpouring of grief language. It went on for what felt like a long time but was probably only a minute. The words ended as abruptly as they began and I felt a warm comforting peace slide through me, over me, under me. As if my heart had poured out ALL of its lament and there was nothing left to say. God had heard and understood every word in my heart and had granted me the peace that passes all understanding. I went straight into a deep sleep and didn’t wake the rest of the night. 

I woke up the next morning sure I would still have the mantle of his peace, and was upset when grief returned full force. My heart was heavy as I trudged out of my bedroom for a cup of coffee. I decided not to say anything of my experience the night before. Maybe I was crazy. It sounded crazy. Even to me. 

Mama called breakfast and I washed my face, dressed and joined them for eggs, bacon and grits. I was haphazardly spooning in a mouthful of eggs when Daddy said “You’re not gonna believe what your mother did last night! She spoke in tongues in her sleep. I lay there and listened to her for the longest time but I finally realized she wasn’t going to quit unless I woke her, so I shook her.” My spoon full of eggs was frozen in mid-air. “What time?” It was the only thing I could think to say. Daddy looked at me like I’m simple and asked the wrong question. But he said “Somewhere between 3:15 and 5.” How he arrived at those numbers I don’t know. Possibly pee-times. He has the usual 80 year old joy of rising frequently at night.

Mama shrugged and smiled “I don’t remember a thing!”  I spilled my guts. Told them everything I remembered from the night before. My lament, the keening, the long conversation in another language. We sat around the table surprised and encouraged. Something had happened that night. Nobody was sure exactly what, but SOMETHING. I believed the Holy Spirit had been in the house and taken hold of at least two of us. But why not three I don’t know. And why wouldn’t Mama remember? I don’t know. Maybe her words were meant for Daddy to hear. So he could tell me. So I would know I wasn’t crazy. I still don’t know, but that’s what I believe. They were witness to my testimony. 

Late that afternoon my cousin Sherryl Sterbens Ford, a prayer warrior I hadn’t seen in several years arrived at our doorstep without so much as a phone call. She came bearing Kentucky Fried Chicken with Larry Ford and my Aunt Lessie Sterbens in tow. We visited and talked only on light subjects, none referring to the events of the night before. Then she handed me a condolence card. It was a beautiful card but I never read the hallmark word. What she’d handwritten grabbed me. She’d written inside on the left cover only one thing: “Praying for a supernatural comfort from the Holy Spirit.” 

I’d gotten it. 

All of the doubt and anger I’d been struggling with the previous three weeks was just gone. Like vapor. I knew. I don’t know exactly what I knew, but I just knew. I might not know why. But someday I will. I can pray again. I feel grief from him FOR me. I felt as clearly in my heart as I feel my own heartbeat that if he could tell me he would. He cannot. My grief continues but my battle is won. I know God is with me as surely as I breathe. I may not know what to say to him, but he knows how to listen. And when I cannot put words to my grief the Holy Spirit can interpret the groanings of the spirit.

I was excited to tell my sisters what happened to me. So the next day I called Cynthia on the phone and relayed all that had happened. She said “There’s something in the Bible about that… I remember groanings of the spirit from something. Let me look.” She came back with “I found it! Romans 8:26! That’s it! That’s what happened to you!” 

I quickly searched out Romans 8:26 and know to the marrow of my bones, that’s EXACTLY what happened to me. I did not know what to pray. So the Holy Spirit visited me and interpreted what I needed to pray. 

But I’d never have found that out if Mama hadn’t spoken in tongues in her sleep. 

Daddy said “In 58 years of marriage I’ve never heard her do that in her sleep!” 

My grief continues, but it’s tempered with the certain knowledge that it is well with my soul, to borrow a much beloved phrase from another grieving parent. 

The work of trying to build a new life will be long and difficult. I am still looking for that manual. But I can pray again. 

I watched Ben consumed by the Holy Spirit last year in a small church in Cape Coral. He was on his knees, worshiping as we all ought every chance we get. I was stiffly in my pew, too burdened by pride or embarrassment to join his beautiful and vocal conversion. But I witnessed it, and that will have to be enough until I see him again.