Apr 10, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
First, I have lived long enough to have outlived most of the people who were important to me when I was young. My parents died years ago. My younger brother died three years ago. All but one of my aunts and uncles have died. Cousins have died. Many close friends have died. At this point, I am reminded of a recurring mantra in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five: “So it goes.”
I don’t find myself weeping for them. I do talk to some of them now and then on my long walks down the narrow canyon to the river below my house. It’s my personal sliver of wildness. But I don’t weep. I do weep for my daughter, Melinda.
My daughter died nine years ago now. She was a doctor, and when the tornado hit Joplin, Missouri, twelve years ago, she served as a first responder working triage, separating those who could be helped from those who couldn’t. She was haunted by those memories. She was at ground zero, breathing in the dust. Three years and one day later, she died from an auto-immune interstitial lung disease. I don’t know, nor can I prove the connection, but there it is, the sequence.
Eight months before she died, I started living with her in Las Vegas, New Mexico. She was working off her medical school debt at a clinic there and wanted someone to keep her company. She didn’t want to live alone in a new town where she knew no one. This kind of fear in her was something new to me. My daughter had always pushed the boundaries before, going to new places and living alone was not new to her. But this is my thinking, looking back on it. At the time, I was retired, writing poetry, and thought of it as an opportunity to spend time with my oldest daughter, who had been out of the house for two decades as well as a place to spend isolated time writing.
So, we lived together in a house on the old Santa Fe Trail, a block from the old Plaza in Las Vegas, for a couple of months. She would leave for work in the morning. I would read, write, and take long walks during the day. Then, when she came home from work in the evening, we would take walks through the town. Often, she would have to slow down or stop to breathe. We thought it was her having to adjust to the high altitude. But after two months, her breathing didn’t get better. In early October, she was too sick to work. I drove her back home to Texas. We thought the lower altitude would help. At first, it seemed to, but she didn’t get well.
There were doctor’s appointments, hospital visits, tests, and more tests. My daughter simply got sicker and sicker, and there was nothing anyone tried to do that helped.
I was holding her and talking to her when she died. I still relive those last days over and over in my mind. There is so much more to say, but you asked me how my loss affected my writing.
It’s been nine years, and somewhere in the equation, I have learned to quit saying it was a loss. Not always. Sometimes, I slip into the mindset of thinking of it as a loss, but that doesn’t help anyone. My daughter died, yes. And yes, I think she was cheated. But my thinking she was cheated doesn’t change the reality of it. And here we come to how it has affected my writing.
In some ways, I might say it hasn’t affected my writing at all. The themes of my poetry seem to be consistent. My use of the extended metaphor hasn’t really changed. But to say her dying had no effect, or my grieving for her had no effect would be misleading. She is almost everywhere in my poetry. But then she always was. All of my children are. Everyone I have ever loved makes appearances. Some people I don’t love, even though I should, make their way in as well.
I weep for her, both in the reality of my waking life and in my writing. So, there’s that. But I also still make coffee every morning. And that becomes the point of it. It can be expressed in so many ways. One is that “the ordinary clings.” Another is a lesson I learned as a young man when I fell in love with someone who didn’t fall in love with me. I thought I would die, but I didn’t. I quit school, joined the Navy, and I thought I would never make it through boot camp, but I did. Andrew Geyer once told me something about being in ranger school. “You think you can’t, but you can.”
I write to breathe, I try to explain. I am constantly haunted by Virginia Woolf’s charge that a writer has an obligation to live in the presence of reality. I swallowed that challenge whole, and that’s what I try to do, if not in my day-to-day, at least in my writing. That, of course, begs the question of what does it mean to live in the presence of reality?
I was in the room with my daughter when her doctor told her there was nothing they could do to help her. It was just the three of us. “I don’t want to tell you this,” her doctor said. She might as well have been speaking in an alien tongue, not foreign as in another country, but alien as from another planet. As soon as he left the room, I dismissed everything she said. I knew my girl was going to get well. I simply knew she would live. That was living in denial and understandable, but it wasn’t living in the presence of reality. Three weeks later, my daughter died. She was surrounded by people who loved her. We sang to her.
Living in the presence of reality is, among other things, accepting that we all die, that all things which can arise, will pass away.
I don’t want to drift into cliché, but it isn’t so much a loss as it was a gift to have had her in my life. Yes, I still weep when I think about her dying. I weep when I think about her as a two-year-old balking in front of the entrance of Carlsbad Caverns. She dug in her heels and said, “No, no, no. Don’t want to go in cave.” So, I carried her the whole way. But carrying her was a gift. Just having her love me was a gift. And I have had so many gifts.
Of course, I can’t carry that attitude all of the time. I am human. But I’m claiming it as my point of view, at least for the moment.
How can poetry help? It helps me. That’s all I can say. Every time I get to know a poem, and getting to know a poem means reading it over and over until something happens. That doesn’t happen with just any poem, but there are moments when a poem can transport you into a realm of clarity. It’s that clarity which helps us to endure. Not just endure, but thrive with a certain style that makes living your life beautiful. That and a good cup of coffee.
About Brady Peterson
Brady Peterson lives near Belton, Texas, where he worked building houses for much of the past thirty years or teaching rhetoric and literature at a local university. He once worked a forklift in a lumber yard in east Austin, tried to teach eighth graders the importance of using language, worked briefly as a technical writer, and helped raise five daughters. He has run one marathon, fought in one karate tournament, climbed one mountain, failed to make the UT baseball team as a walk-on, and took tango lessons with his wife. He is the author of Dust, Between Stations, From an Upstairs Window, García Lorca is Somewhere in Produce and At the Edge of Town.
Resources:
Brady Peterson website
Dust by Brady Peterson
Between Stations by Brady Peterson
From an Upstairs Window by Brady Peterson
García Lorca is Somewhere in Produce by Brady Peterson
At the Edge of Town by Brady Peterson
Apr 10, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief
My own loss and the deep grief that accompanies it brought about profound change in the way I experience creativity. Deep loss breaks you down in a way that also cracks you open. There is loss of control and surrender. Tears and sorrow pour out, but light also pours in. I learned to listen to my voice in whispers — my intuition — instead of dismissing it. Instead of trying to craft something that made sense, I listened to thoughts and wrote down what came, almost like transcribing. Then I could always go back and shape things. Writing from a place of intuition and deep vulnerability helped in my healing, and I was also pleasantly surprised to learn that it resonated with others.
I have lost count of how many times poetry has been a life raft for me. Poems can help us to know we are not alone. They can access emotional places that ordinary conversation does not. I believe that the purpose of art is to whisper truths to each other in the dark. There is an intimacy and magic in reading words on a page that move you, that speak to you. That is the gift a poet is giving us with her/his/their careful attention—to let you know you are not alone in the dark.
About Beth Wood
Beth Wood is a modern-day troubadour, poet, and believer in the power of word and song. Beth has been writing, performing, and creating for twenty-five years. In addition to releasing fifteen albums, Beth has released three books of poetry, Kazoo Symphonies, Ladder to the Light (2019 finalist for the Oregon Book Award Stafford/Hall award for poetry and 2019 Winner of the Oregon Book Award Readers’ Choice Award) and Believe the Bird (Winner of the San Francisco Book Festival Poetry Award). She has been recognized by the prestigious Kerrville New Folk Award, The Sisters Folk Festival Dave Carter Memorial Songwriting Award, the Billboard World Song Contest, The Oregon Book Awards, and many more. Beth lives in Sisters, Oregon, with her rescue dog Hannah and is continuously writing and rewriting her artist’s manifesto.
Resources:
Beth Wood website
Kazoo Symphonies, by Beth Wood
Ladder to the Light by Beth Wood, 2019 finalist for the Oregon Book Award Stafford/Hall award for poetry and 2019 Winner of the Oregon Book Award Readers’ Choice Award
Believe the Bird by Beth Wood, Winner of the San Francisco Book Festival Poetry Award
Beth Wood’s photo was taken by Heaven McArthur
Read other acclaimed poets reflections on grief
Apr 5, 2023 | Family, Federal Government, FMLA, Grief
By Prerna Shah
When a loved one dies, many family members seek bereavement leave to attend to family affairs, their grief, and sort through the many changes that invisibly unfold behind closed doors. It may be surprising to learn that most employees have no legal right to take leave, except in five states in America (learn more about state bereavement laws here).
The Family Medical Leave Act, also known as FMLA, provides job and benefits protection for 56 percent of the United States workforce; however, bereavement is not an eligible condition for job or wage protection. Many may be surprised to learn that newly bereaved families have no legal right to take leave to cope with the death of a loved one.
So, what is a newly bereaved family member to do?
In honor of National Employee Benefits Day, Evermore sat down with Jeff Nowak, an FMLA expert, who provides legal strategies and solutions for employers of all sizes across the globe, for an in-depth conversation on all aspects of FMLA.
1) What is the FMLA?
FMLA is a federal law that provides up to 12 weeks of leave to an eligible employee in a 12-month period. There are a number of reasons why you may be eligible for FMLA job protection, including
- An employee’s own serious health condition,
- the employee has to care for a family member with a serious health condition, or
- due to pregnancy,
- bonding time after childbirth or adoption, or placement into foster care, and
- a qualifying need due to the active duty of a spouse, child, or parent.
While FMLA generally covers all public-sector employers, it also extends coverage to private employers that have 50 or more employees in a 75-mile radius. In general, to be eligible, an employee must have worked for at least 1,250 hours over the previous 12 months.
2) Does FMLA offer bereavement leave?
No, generally, FMLA does not specifically provide bereavement leave; however, Department of Labor statements and legislative history indicate a miscarriage is classified as a “serious health condition.” As a result, both miscarriage and stillbirth — two conditions before independent life begins — should be eligible for FMLA bereavement leave if the birthing person is unable to work because of her own “serious health condition” (e.g., physical recovery from miscarriage and/or labor and delivery, emotional distress). Paternal coverage may be extended if the spouse is caring for a loved one with a serious health condition.
For most bereaved families, however, bereavement is not an eligible event for FMLA job or wage protection.
Novak shares, “Oftentimes, employers have their own bereavement leave policies. Generally, these policies cover one to three days of bereavement leave, but that is not enough for most people. FMLA can be invoked to cover bereavement leave if the employee has a serious health condition like depression or anxiety, but you would need to invoke the ‘serious health condition.’”
3) How can you best communicate with your employer after a loss?
Communication is key.
According to Novak, “It’s so critical that the employee simply communicates upfront. Be candid with your employer. I’m hurting right now. This is a really difficult time for me, I can’t keep my attention on my work when I’m dealing with this loss in my life.”
“Some of us are fearful of that, right? We’re fearful of what the employer may do. We are in fear of losing our job as a result. But it’s important to characterize what you’re dealing with; if you need to start using words like, “My mental health is at issue here, or I just need to leave for my own mental health.” I tell employers that that line alone triggers an FMLA obligation. Now we potentially are in an FMLA-protected situation.”
Novak suggests that it’s beneficial to involve the HR team: “It’s important to be in full communication with the HR team. Look at your FMLA policy and find out, who does your employer want you to communicate with?”
Candid and open communication with the employer can make a difference; however, only share what you feel comfortable with. When the employer understands that coping is inducing mental distress, that’s when FMLA may be triggered, and this affords the employee job-protected leave.
4) What compensation is offered through the FMLA?
Leave associated with FMLA is unpaid.
When someone close to us dies, families often incur unexpected costs like funeral expenses, moving property or estate titles, among others. Novak shares, “By its very nature, federal FMLA is unpaid. And that remains (so) today. And I would say for the foreseeable future, federal FMLA is going to be unpaid.”
Nowak adds, “As a result of Congress being unable or unwilling to pass a paid leave law at the federal level, we’ve seen quite a bit of growth at the state and local level when it comes to paid FMLA leave.”
If you are able to take bereavement leave, it’s important to keep in mind that employers have no legal obligation to pay the employer during their leave.
Nowak notes that while a handful of states have passed their own FMLA laws, others have passed paid FMLA laws and others have provisions for paid sick leave (learn more about state bereavement laws here).
Nowak says, “It’s likely that we may see a paid leave law that involves contributions from either the employer or the employee or both sharing (contributions) that provide the funding for paid leave.”
5) Where can I find out more information?
For more in-depth coverage of our session with Jeff Nowak, you can head to our YouTube channel, and don’t forget to subscribe while you are checking our videos. We regularly update our channel with resources from experts working in the area of grief and bereavement, and our ‘In the Know’ sessions are very popular and informative.
On our website, you will also find many relevant and expert-led resources on FMLA – miscarriage and stillbirth, state laws and legislation related to bereavement leave, U.S. military bereavement leave guidance, general information on grief, how community leaders can help, our national grief support directory, books on grief for adults and children, our most recent achievements in advancing in bereavement care, and more.
Please also help spread the word about FMLA and bereavement leave, have these conversations with your colleagues and coworkers on this National Employee Benefits Day.
