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.
Mar 30, 2023 | Community, Family, Grief, Parent
By Terri Schexnayder
Country music’s familiar heart-tugging lyrics of country-western ballads about cheating, love lost, and traveling roads in pickup trucks always seems to have a place for grief. Hits are littered with songs about love, death, grief, and faith as artists share their feelings and coping strategies ranging from tears to whiskey.
Steve Seskin is a name you might not know, but he’s written seven number one hit songs and is a two-time Grammy-nominated songwriter for songs that both feature grief, including Tim McGraw’s “Grown Men Don’t Cry,” and Mark Wills’ “Don’t Laugh at Me.”
The inspiration for “Grown Men Don’t Cry” came from a conversation between Seskin and McGraw about their fathers. Seskin was estranged from his father, who died from a heart attack shortly before they were scheduled to reconnect, and he spoke about the impact his father’s death had on his life.
“I wrote the lines, ‘I just placed a rose on his grave and I talked to the wind’ because that happened to me. I stood by my father’s grave in Queens, New York, and had the ‘mend fences’ talk that we had never had in real life,” he said.
Seskin and McGraw bonded over the fact that neither had a good relationship with their dads. Seskin said, “It was the rose on the grave line that killed me, and McGraw, who grew up not knowing his dad, understood. Later, Tim and Tug McGraw became close.”
“Our dads weren’t the epitome of what a dad was supposed to be. It can’t be good for you to suppress sadness, grief, and emotions. I don’t want to be that kind of dad. I want to express my emotions. Emotions should be embraced — you need to go through them. When you deny it, you mess with the process.”
Grammy-nominated songwriter Seth Glier described the power of his favorite country song about loss, “One More Day.” The song was written by Bobby Tomberlin and Steven Dale and made famous by the band Diamond Rio. “I love the second verse, ‘first thing I’d do is pray for time to crawl.’ I especially appreciate how much space there is in the writing for the listener to insert their story into the song. This song could be about anybody yet for most people is about a very specific somebody.”
Glier, who lost his brother Jamie seven years ago, shared “Jamie was born with autism, loved horseback riding, swimming, and pottery and lived his life without the ability to speak in an oral form. He had a language, but it was one all his own and I often credit him with my interest in songwriting. My brother’s death was my first introduction to what I call the territory of grief. The territory is sort of like an ocean. Other people in my life have since passed and brought me back there. After the initial awkward and painful fumbling around that territory, I’ve found a fountain of gratitude and compassion there. I’ve found that I can connect deeply with just about anybody now. I consider that a tremendous gift from Jamie.”
Seskin and Glier co-wrote “When You Lose Someone Like That” for Evermore, and for anyone who has loved and lost someone they dearly love.
Like “One More Day,” the absence of specific explanations for Evermore’s “like that” refrain intentionally does not name who has died. This technique is used in many country songs. “For example, country music star Kenny Chesney’s 2005 release, ‘Who You’d Be Today,’ written by Aimee Mayo and Bill Luther, doesn’t name a specific person, rather the songwriters used “you” to connect directly with the listener,” noted Seskin.
“We hear the listener saying, ‘like what?’ It was about the suggestion of sadness. It can come out of nowhere. Songs serve many listeners,” said Seskin.
“In the end, we write to share our songs with many people…we want the listener to complete the piece, bringing their own life to it. They understand the person they lost more than I do. There is value in not defining things or limiting the story.”
Country music’s best will take center stage this weekend in the annual Country Music Television Awards in Austin, Texas. Loss is prominent for two Performance of the Year nominees. Emmy Russell and Lukas Nelson are nominated for their performance of “Lay Me Down,” originally sung by Willie Nelson, Lukas Nelson’s father, and dearly departed Loretta Lynn. The other nominee is the Judds’ performance of “Love Can Build a Bridge.” It’s a touching performance because Wynonna Judd performs with her late mother, Naomi, who died by suicide just one day before being inducted into the Country Hall of Fame last April.
During her acceptance speech, Wynonna remarked on the two conflicting emotions conveyed in her title song, “Broken and Blessed.”
I’m somewhere between hell and hallelujah’ … this is me, broken and blessed.
“I’m gonna make this fast, because my heart’s broken, and I feel so blessed. It’s a very strange dynamic to be this broken and this blessed. … Though my heart’s broken, I will continue to sing, because that’s what we do,” Wyonna said.
Resources:
Steve Seskin
Seth Glier
When You Lose Someone Like That
Judds Country Music Hall of Fame
Mar 10, 2023 | Family, Federal Government, Grief
By Terri Schexnayder
Often, when someone dies, we seek to support the grieving family in a meaningful way. In a sign of solidarity and love, we attend memorials or funerals, send condolences, prepare meals, and sometimes participate in athletic events or donate to fundraisers for a related cause.
When a child or teenager loses a parent, their lives can be upended. Beyond losing the relationship, a child may experience food or housing insecurity, loss of healthcare, or even logistical challenges attending after-school programs. Their school may struggle with compassionate policies and procedures and seek to have the student return to school as soon as possible to ensure educational continuity (see our list of helpful ideas for compassionate schools here). Even university students report similar challenges following a death (see Evermore’s efforts in advancing bereavement support among universities here).
Yet, there is a little-known economic benefit that a bereaved child may be eligible to receive if either of their parents participated in the United States workforce. This Social Security benefit is available to some bereaved children, payable upon their parents’ death. However, some experts project that more than half of America’s parentally bereaved children are not receiving the benefit, resulting in upwards of $15 billion in benefits not being conferred to bereaved children and families).
More than 2.2 million children in the United States today have experienced the death of a co-resident mother or father. Dr. David Weaver estimates that 45 percent of children with one parental death receive the Social Security Administration (SSA) benefit, and 49 percent of fully orphaned children receive the benefit. Why so many children do not receive their eligible benefits is poorly understood. In some cases, families do not know about the benefit, or an administrative error denies an eligible child. In other instances, bereaved children or orphans do not qualify because their parents did not achieve fully insured status. This means that either parent did not earn enough wages to receive the benefits.
According to the SSA, an unmarried child may be eligible for benefits if they are:
- Younger than age 18;
- 18-19 years old and a full-time student (no higher than grade 12); or
- 18 or older with a disability that began before age 22.
Once the child reaches age 18, they will no longer be eligible to receive benefits unless they are a student or disabled.
If you know a child who has experienced the death of a parent, please share Evermore’s guidance on how to apply for these benefits. Also, consider sharing SSA’s application for benefits with their caretakers.
SSA guidance states, “A child can receive up to half of the parent’s full retirement or disability benefit. If a child receives Survivors Benefits, he or she can get up to 75 percent of the deceased parent’s basic Social Security benefit.”
Weaver’s study revealed that “when Social Security and other government programs are accessed, evidence suggests that child well-being is stabilized, thus plausibly facilitating better educational, health, and economic outcomes—a benefit not only to individuals, but also to the nation in terms of elevated human capital, productivity, and innovation.”
“It takes a village to raise a child. The potential for lifelong success, well-being, and prosperity depends on us — the community — to support a grieving family. As the nation reels from concurrent mortality epidemics, it’s important to understand the public benefits system, especially for our nation’s most vulnerable children,” says Joyal Mulheron, Executive Director of Evermore.
Resources:
SSA Blog Post: Social Security Pays Benefits to Children After the Death of a Parent
SSA Fact Sheet: Benefits for Children
Evermore Fact Sheet: How to Apply for Child Survivors Benefits
Parental Mortality and Outcomes among Minor and Adult Children
