Grief Graffiti

There is no greater loss for a parent than the loss of a child. My heart is broken & it’s often difficult to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, much less get through the day. But I have discovered that honoring my son by making a difference in the lives of others keeps his memory alive & brings purpose & meaning. So I’ve been engaging in activities that reflect his passions and interests. Whether it’s volunteering, mentoring, offering support to other grieving parents, or guiding Grief Yoga sessions, I am determined to be a source of light in the darkness, just as he was. By helping others, I not only extend compassion and kindness in his name but also find comfort in the knowledge that his memory continues to impact lives positively.

Tristan had such a heart for the unsheltered, having been homeless himself for a period of time. Every Thanksgiving he & his friends would cook up as much food as they could on their meager earnings & pass out meals to as many as they could. Over this past Christmas I watched him tear up as we watched the news about the severe ice storm in Portland, saying: “So many of the homeless are going to die!”. His younger brother, Troy, shares that compassion as there are so many young people living on the streets in the area he lives. Unlike some cities, Phoenix has very few resources for providing free water. Last summer Phoenix broke records for unsheltered deaths and we are on pace to double that this year. I mentioned this need & my desire to help to my friend & coworker, Jennifer, and she got on board and helped me get this off the ground. We just started this past week but were already able to pass out over 1000 bottles of water & already have a group of volunteers and several businesses donating cases of water for weekly distribution! (Drops of Kindness – Hope in Hydration, @dropsofkindnessaz)

One of my son’s friends just set up a foundation in his name in Portland to get Narcan (aka Naloxone, a medicine that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose) to the club and sex workers throughout the city (NextDistro.org, @naloxonesfavoriteth0t). Tristan had once been the recipient of Narcan & it saved his life, so he became a huge proponent of it. He collected as much as he could, along with test strips, passing it out & making sure everyone around him had a stash of it & knew how to use it in case someone around them overdosed. Unfortunately, in the end he couldn’t save himself, but if we can help save others through this project then we’ll ensure that his impact endures & find purpose in our pain.

It’s not easy & there are days I don’t feel like doing this, days I just want to die myself & forget this cruel world. But on the other days I will continue to carry his memory in my heart, channeling the love I have for him into deeds that touch the lives of others. I hope he’s proud of me…as I will always be of him.

“In the immediate aftermath of my son’s death, I wasn’t sure if I would ever write again, lecture again, or even want to live again. I canceled everything for six weeks. Despite my awareness that the search for meaning is one of the keys to healing from grief, I did not know if there was any way I could find meaning in this loss. Like so many others who grieve, something in me felt that my grief was too great to be healed. But then I felt I needed to get back to work. I needed to be of service and keep my own pain moving. As time goes by, I have been able to keep finding deeper meaning in David’s life as well as in his death, as I will describe in later chapters. Meaning is the love I feel for my son. Meaning is the way I have chosen to bear witness to the gifts he gave me. Meaning is what I have tried to do to keep others from dying of the same thing that killed David. For all of us, meaning is a reflection of the love we have for those we have lost.”

David Kessler, “Finding Meaning”