Chapter 9. Migrating

3 minute read

I hope you’ll read my book Willower and/or share it with someone you think it may help. I know a grief memoir might not be what you had in mind for your next read, but haven’t you been averse to other things, like Brussels sprouts, but you tried them anyway? Good storytelling, no matter the subject, is just plain good storytelling. And like Brussels sprouts, reading a good book also has health benefits. And, when you do read it, you’ll also be keeping my son Sam’s memory alive. So . . . No pressure.

about this chapter

Chapter 9. Migrating moves through the years after Sam’s death (2007), from 2010 to 2018.

editing notes

I borrowed the idea of migrating (through grief) from a research paper Sam wrote about arctic terns.

Tern colonies breed in the Arctic Circle. They lay eggs in grassy areas and both parents care for them. The colony flies to the edge of the Antarctic ice pack. Its days are long and sunlit from one hemisphere to the other. The Tern spends each of its 20 years of life flying the earth’s circumference.

Dread is the sudden silence that follows the noise of a socializing Tern colony right before they take to the air and fly away to begin their migration, the longest migration of any bird.

(from Sam’s research paper: The Arctic Tern)

I was thrilled when my editing coach praised the chapter and encouraged me to use the word migration as much as possible. “We can always take out over-use as needed.”

As the arctic terns continued their migration—the longest migration of any bird—from one hemisphere to the other, I followed them, their shadows on the sidewalk, as they passed over me.

(from Chapter 9. Migrating: desire)

hearing the truth

It was the five-year mark that felt like a turning point. That year, 2012, Sam would’ve been fourteen. This is when I decided to clean his room.

For five years and five months I had let the dust in his room stay, unable to erase even the smallest atom of him.

“Sam, I’m sorry . . . But you’re older now—you don’t play with these toys anymore. And you’ve outgrown these shirts . . . these shoes.”

(from Chapter 9. Migrating: treasure)

While filling boxes with things to donate, sell, or trash, I listen to an audiobook: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can’t by Augusten Burroughs.

Parents who have lost a child should be told that they will never heal from their loss. They will always have a terrible, wide hole within them. And other holes, smaller ones . . .

(from Augusten Burrough’s book, This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can’t)

Finally, someone told me the truth. We bereaved parents never heal from this loss. Now, I can continue on, migrating, without waiting for the “healing” to happen—because it never will. The terrible wide hole within me would be something I would have to learn to live with as I continue to readapt to my new reality. Perhaps, in time, something evergreen will grow from out of that terrible, wide hole.

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