I am slowly posting the entirety of Grieving Futures: Surviving the Deaths of My Parents, here on Patience & Fortitude for free. You can still buy the book if you would like (doing so helps support my writing!). I am doing this to make it as available as possible because I want anyone who might relate to the situation I found myself in during the mid-1990s to know they are not alone. General warnings are in place: this book address grief, mourning, self-harm, anger, poverty, and pet death, all in the context of becoming an adult orphan in my twenties.
Preface of the Third Edition (written, 2017)
This book was initially written partly as a therapeutic tool, and partly as a way to reach out to others with similar experiences. It worked well on both counts, and while I sometimes cringe while re-reading parts of it, I’m still proud to have written it at the time I did.
I remember waking up one morning and thinking to myself, “I have no reason to live.” It was not a suicidal statement but rather the realization that my life was without purpose, meaning, or joy. I was getting up every day for the sole purpose of going to work for the sake of paying the bills, and coming home from work for the sole purpose of “following through” on a marriage that I did not want to admit was on a downward spiral (and had been for a few years).
I talk a lot about the negative effects that my mother’s mental illnesses had on my life, but one thing I can credit her for is teaching me to recognize that moment when I have gone too far in a dangerous direction, psychologically speaking. Knowing I was at crisis, I reached out for help, and I was lucky in turn to receive it.
In spring of 2010 I was filing for divorce and applying to graduate school. I was still on very rocky financial waters (which to this day I have not quite calmed completely) but I felt freer and more complete than I had since…well, since long before my parents died.
And I wrote this book.
Now, seven (!!!) years later, I look back on that time as epochal. I consider it the breakthrough I should have had in my twenties, had my life been different. I’m still nowhere near where I thought I would be, in terms of life experiences and conquests, but I have hit some important mile markers: I got my master’s degree; I got a dog (!); I have a professional job in a field that is personally rewarding; I am a published author; I am an artist.
In the spirit of change and progress, I’ve decided to return to this book, edit it, and add an afterward detailing the arc my life took after the events described here. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that grief cycles back through our lives, and colors everything we do, think, and feel. I feel good about where I am now, but the journey continues.
