Happiness is Overrated

Trigger Warning: You will find no snowflakes or unicorns, no proverbial smiley faces, and only one rainbow below. There are no inspirational quotes. Only vestiges of my dark times.

“Dear reader, if you picked up this book with the hope of finding a simple and cheery tale, I’m afraid you have picked up the wrong book altogether.” Lemony Snicket.

A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of 13 children's novels by Lemony Snicket that follows the turbulent lives of three young children after their parents' death in a fire. The books would be terrifying for any child were they not so funny. Hans read all 13 in elementary school and Eric is now reading them as he retraces Hans’s life’s reading.

This post is long and filled with sadness. I may even be repeating myself. You have been warned. Stop reading now. I might piss you off.

I am a liar

I lied. I lied back in April of 2014 just after Hans died when I wrote that we would be fine. It was a coping mechanism, positive self-talk. I will not be fine, as I pledged to be. Ever. I might have a fine dinner, a fine time with my beautiful family, a fine celebration, a day with fine weather. But I am not fine and can never be fine because my child, my amazing, wonderful Hans is dead. Children are supposed to outlive their parents. This is just not the way it is supposed to be in the natural order of the world. I will never be fine and cannot see how any mother whose child has died could ever be fine. It’s like a special curse placed on mothers of dead children. Sorry Eric, sorry grandparents, sorry cousins, sorry aunts and uncles. I know he’s dead to you too but I feel it can never affect you as deeply as it does me, who carried him in my womb for nine months, who nursed him until he was grudgingly forced to give it up at one and a half, who kissed and snuggled him nearly every night of his childhood, who listened to him and cried with him, read to him and laughed with him, hugged him and loved him with all my being. I am still devastated. I function and have happy moments and joyous times with those I love, but still not a moment goes by where I don’t think of him and his death.

There's always that nagging, ever-present feeling deep in my gut that something is not right, and can never be fully right again in our lives. Nothing. Because Hans will always be missing from it.

Moving into our third year after Hans’s death, I am not as incapacitated as I was the first two years. The second year is really worse than the first, after the adrenaline wears off, but when I think about him, at all, I can still feel the horror of getting the phone call, of the long, horrible drive up to Baltimore, of learning the jeep was going fast enough to separate his skull from his spine but somehow not severing it or his nerves, of seeing his bruised and disfigured face and head, his broken teeth, of kissing his cold body lying in his coffin, of shoveling the dirt into his grave. If I think about him too much, I can’t breathe well. I hear my heartbeat in my head. I cry every day. I hear from other longer-grieving mothers that there is hope for better days. But I still don’t believe them yet.

I know that it is a common courtesy to greet people with, “Hello, how are you?” And it is supposed to be a common courtesy to return the greeting with, “Fine, thank you. How are you?” I cannot say fine, or good, or great, or peachy. I would be lying again. I am not going to answer how I truly feel, because that’s not the point of the greeting. Sometimes I say to people I know, “I am always sad, but happy to see you,” or, “It’s nice to see you,” or just, “How are you?” Why should I pretend I’m fine when the most horrible thing that can happen to a mother – yes, it really is – has happened to me, to us, to Hans?

If I keep my thoughts of him at a shallow level, I am now truly able to smile and laugh and be silly. But the moment I give him any deeper thought, really think about him or the accident, or listen to a song or look at a photo or watch his videos, I am crushed and weakened again, so I rarely do any of those things. I can understand why some grieving parents refuse to have photos of their deceased child out for viewing, why they will walk away when something or someone stabs their memories with a sound or song or smell. It hurts too much. I can also understand why some give up activities that used to bring them pleasure. How can I celebrate or have fun when Hans cannot?

I continue to get frustrated with people who are smug and silly for making superfluous things into monumental things. To me Hans’s death, any death, especially the death of one’s child, and really only death is monumental, eclipsing presidential elections, world politics, petty neighborhood squabbles. To others I know his death isn’t monumental, but surely they can understand, as I did long before Hans died, that someone’s child dying is pretty monumental to us. I am not diminishing horrible things or the people who suffer from them, for which I have true sympathy – rape, torture, starvation, abuse, debilitating illness – but I still think there is nothing so permanent, so hopeless as death.

Recently I read one person’s comment that the Benghazi victims (each someone’s child, brother, husband, father) were just a “handful of people who died,” that we should stop obsessing about it, showing we’ve become so immune to death (like abortion). Even so, millions more know of that particular “handful of people” but not nearly as many will ever know about Hans. That’s what makes mothers sad. We want our children to be known too. Known somehow to all the people who will never get to know them, but would have known them were they still alive. Known to the smiling attendant at the gas station, the funny guys at the county dump, the sweet couple who own the dry cleaning business, the nice cashiers at the grocery store, neighbors, coworkers, servers, hair stylists – people who will never know Hans and whom Hans will never get to know. That’s why I have my website, others have scholarships, foundations, memorial runs, and turtle hospitals.

[I must note that our wonderful ‘technical family’ at the American Nuclear Society created, funded, and endowed a scholarship in Hans’s name and memory, a beautiful tribute to our son, something we do not have the wherewithal to coordinate, and we cannot thank ANS enough for demonstrating their love for Hans and our family this way. http://www.ans.org/honors/scholarships/loewen/ ]

Here we go again, hope

Death is the one thing for which there is no hope. If you’re dead, you’re dead and gone. There IS hope, if even the tiniest bit, if your child is ill, injured, addicted, missing, doing poorly in school, hates you, or doesn’t talk to you. But there is absolutely not a single molecule of hope when your child is dead. Other hopes keep me going, but the burden of the lost hope that is Hans still keeps me deflated. Mothers of dead children do not deserve the judgment or criticism that many people make about how we honor our children. I have heard it with my own ears and seen it with my own eyes how others wickedly and cruelly judge some grieving parents.

I have to say these words regularly and matter-of-factly: “When Hans died...” “After Hans died....” “Before Hans died ....” I challenge you to say these words out loud about your child too. Really, try it, out loud:

"My child ___________________________ is dead."

How does it make you feel even just saying those words out loud? How, then, can anyone judge a parent’s manner of grieving?

Yet they do.

I also saw someone once write that suffering is a choice. Is it really a choice when it's because your child is dead? I cannot choose or hope that Hans come back to life. Does God not suffer when there is pain and destruction and death? We are told that God loves us like a parent loves her child. Can God love too much? Absolutely not. If we are made in God’s image then, how can we possibly love too much? God's love is truly like a parent’s love. We love our child just for being. We may not always like what they do but we always love them. That is why parents love their children with all their imperfections. We do not and should not expect anything in return from our children. Love them. And we do. That’s it.

Eric has long said, “Happiness is overrated.” We aspire to be kind and happy. We should aspire instead to be virtuous, strong, hard working, honest, forgiving, and loving, and then we will find and share moments of kindness and happiness. We think we are being kind when really we are only momentarily happy and we want to share that happiness.

I find that people saying that God grants their wishes, their desires, their miracles with a new home or a new job or a great doctor, and that God is Good, is said only when one is happy and feels their wish/desire/miracle was “chosen by God” and has been granted. True kindness comes when one is sad, like a grieving mother whose most heartfelt wish/desire/miracle to have their child alive and well is not “chosen by God,” and yet they can still work hard, be honest, be forgiving, and love. I do not feel very kind sometimes and know that I need to keep working on that. But I also challenge you to examine what you are sharing about God being Good the next time you say it, or when your miracle doesn’t happen or when things don’t go your way, like your child dying.

I am not mad at God or Jesus or Christianity or any religion. I am angry at the completely wrong interpretation of religion by humans, people who believe that God cherry-picks winners and losers, like he’s gambling or playing the lottery for fun. It was God's plan for winner John to live! Loser Hans dies! Winner Sally gets a miracle! Loser Brittany dies! Winner Cameron dies and gets to have a great and famous legacy! Loser Max dies and gets only a quiet legacy. But God doesn't choose winners and losers. You do. I’m not saying that God isn’t Good all the time, just that it’s hurtful that people say it only when they are happy and truly, and wrongly, believe that they’re specially Chosen Ones because their good fortune supposedly comes directly from God choosing them. They imply that we were not chosen. That Hans was not chosen. They are wrong. God chooses everyone, all the time – everyone is worthy of life, everyone is worthy of love, and it is we, the people, who live that life with choices and chance and biology and gravity and motion and judgment and imperfection.

Take the exit

Some say we should live our lives like our dogs. Floppy, our border collie, and Fifi, our English bulldog, are all excited to get in the car and go on the journey. They jump right in, not knowing or caring where they're going, just happy that they get to go. They might even be headed to the vet to be put down, but there they are – excited to hear the keys jangling, the windows rolling down, sticking their heads right out, pointing their noses into the wind, their tongues flopping, enjoying the ride.

We are supposed to enjoy the journey too and not worry about the destination. And we were doing just that on March 22, 2014.

Our family was having a great time, going great places, on a fast, fancy super freeway in our nice car, with so many other people sharing the road. But it feels like our family has been in a terrible crash on that busy highway, in such a horrible way that Hans is dead, his broken body now buried. The remaining three of us each breathtakingly and irrevocably injured. Others were injured in the crash too, but they are back driving on the freeway again, some more sad, some a little more careful and aware I hope. But we, who loved him most, have been towed off onto a dark, lonely, scary, little-used exit, forever without Hans.

We sit and watch from the crashed car that is our life, trying to heal, as traffic keeps going merrily along the freeway, the cars flying past full of happy, silly, fighting, bored, oblivious, caring, careless, amazing people, some who will take future exits of their own. Sometimes people will look out their windows at us, some may communicate with us as best they can, waving or calling from afar, and some really caring people will actually take the exit to come visit us. When they do visit, we feel loved and refreshed. But I can understand why many no longer visit or call. Who wants to take such a dark and horrible exit? They want to and need to continue their own journey.

I know that no one else can tow us back onto the freeway, and we can’t just jump into someone else’s car. I don’t have the energy, the gas, or the new car to jump back on the freeway myself. We will have to someday drive ourselves off the exit, with help from our family and friends. But maybe I’ll never be able to get back on the freeway. Sometimes I don’t want to at all.

I don’t want people to take the exit because they pity us but because they care, and they enjoy being with us. I can also understand that many will not visit unless they are invited, such as it is in today’s world where everything is planned in advance. I am not good about broadcasting what I need, so most often even I don’t know whom to visit spontaneously myself, who needs help, who would like to hear from me. As I said before, my empathy bucket is drained and still has a huge hole in it. I haven’t fixed and refilled that bucket yet, don’t know if and when I ever can, and still don’t have much energy to share. I probably won’t call you, but I’ll call you back. I am in a constant state of missing Hans. You, most likely, are not.

It’s simple

I just miss him. I miss his crooked pinkies, his hairy arms, his beautiful blue eyes, his early-morning adventures, his goofy laugh when he and Zatha were together, his drumming with me. I miss our silly family dinners, our fancy dollar-dinners, how he and Zatha would roll their eyes at each other when we held weekly planning meetings. I miss his pat-pat-rub-rubs, I miss his music. I miss his hugs. I miss him. I miss him. I miss him.

All of his humor – gone.

All of his fun – gone.

His silliness – gone.

His seriousness – gone.

His obsessiveness – gone.

His talent – gone.

His enthusiasm – gone.

His love – gone.

Him – gone.

You can say he’s all around me, waiting for us in heaven, in the universe, in my heart. Yes, of course. But Hans as I knew him, birthed him, raised him, played with him, watched him, loved him, laughed with him, filmed him, played music with him, is gone.

I feel like that hole, that drained empathy bucket, left in my chest when Hans died has now had a big metal coffee can rammed into it and all of Hans, my love for him, my memories, the pain, has been compressed and densely packed tightly into that can. It's so heavy.

Does he have to have a legacy?

Are relationships today in America different than they were in the 19th century? Could it be that our basic needs are so well and easily met that we are able to devote more time and energy to our relationships, with our children, our siblings, our spouses? How did mothers grieve 200 years ago? And what about mothers in other cultures, ones where the mortality rates are so much higher, where some mothers can easily lose multiple children to violence, illness, or starvation? How do those mothers grieve? Does it matter?

What does it mean to have a “legacy”? Why do we feel the need to “leave a legacy”? Can it be enough to have loved and to have been loved? To have lived a simple life that didn’t necessarily end up radically changing the world? Anyone who has lived leaves something of a legacy, and that’s not the same as giving everyone a trophy. Just by living we have affected the lives of the people we know. After the next generation will anyone remember my Grandmothers Zatha and Elsie, both of whom were amazing in many ways, each of whom taught me and everyone they knew immeasurably important things? No, they will not be remembered and neither will Hans after even fewer generations. So it’s important to me to have him remembered now.

Life really is simple – but it sure isn’t easy and no one should expect it to be. We must focus on doing what we are good at in our circle of influence, whether that circle is young and small, or mature and large. I told Hans and Zatha regularly as they were growing up that they didn’t need to change the world, they just needed to do their best (not be the best) in whatever they were doing. Media (TV, internet) has fostered in us the arrogant belief that our circle of influence is bigger than it really is. Our legacies should be focused on the center of our circles, on the people we love, the people we meet every day, the grocers and drycleaners and servers. Hans didn’t feel the need to venture too far out of the center of his circle. He was happy with a simple legacy.

He jumped

Hans liked to jump. He jumped off of the high dive when he was four. He jumped onto a skateboard when he was five. He jumped onto black diamond ski runs when he was nine. He jumped into drumming when he was 10. He jumped into surfing when was 12. He jumped onto a kiteboard when he was 17. He badly broke his collar bone bike jumping. He jumped off the end of the Surf City Pier and faced two years in jail (really).

Before Hans could receive his full appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy he had to submit to the Conduct Review Board at the Academy a letter explaining the pier jumping incident (something that will always show up on his background check). Here is his letter.

1. What exactly happened in your own words?

Living where we do at the beach (my home in Hampstead is just seven miles from Surf City, NC), and the fact that we have no television, our family is very physically active, as am I. Daily we are either running, swimming, surfing, biking, kitesurfing, etc., and thus spend a lot of time at the beach, especially in the summer. During the school year if the waves are good, I will get up early before school to surf, and if the waves are good in the evening after practice we’ll head there again (my dad surfs, and my mom loves to photograph our surfing). In Surf City the waves are always best right at the Surf City Pier, the most popular surfing spot on Topsail Island.

Having lived here now for more than five years and being friends with the locals it is common knowledge and considered a rite of passage for surfers to jump from the end of the Surf City Pier into the water. Most surfers regularly jump with their board from the end of the pier during the winter when the strong currents make it more difficult to paddle out to the waves, and when there are few, if any, fishermen on the pier or swimmers in the water.

In 2010 we had living with us for the year a U.S. Marine, Robert, stationed at Camp LeJeune. Robert is the son of my dad’s best friend from college, and our families have visited each other many times over the years. During the summer of 2010 his whole family, including Robert’s 19 year-old younger brother Bryan, came to visit. Having spent a few great days at the beach, I had the notion of jumping off the pier. I knew it was against the pier rules to do so, but I had no idea that there was a law on the books making it illegal. Because it was the last day of their visit, and noticing that the water was very calm and not too busy, we just thought it would be a fun thing to do.

We paid our dollar each to go out on the pier. It was a very calm ocean that day, no waves, no currents, great weather. After walking to the end and seeing the water all clear we just jumped, safely landed in the water, and swam to shore. A fisherman on the pier saw the event, and called the police. We were pretty easy to find since Bryan is a 6’3”, 215-pound long-haired, red-headed lacrosse player, and I’m a tan, 5’9,” wiry 145-pound, blonde surfer. After the local policeman arrived, he approached the two of us near my family car, asked us if we had jumped from the pier, which we admitted, then gathered our information. After a long wait, he wrote us tickets for breaking the local ordinance.

2. When did it happen?

Friday, July 30, 2010, 10:55 a.m.

3. Where did it happen?

Surf City Pier, 112 S. Shore Drive, Surf City, North Carolina.

4. What was your thought process in doing what you did?

I’ve always enjoyed extreme sports like snowboarding double black diamond ski runs in Colorado, kiteboarding, mountain biking, jumping from cliffs into water holes (NRA Adventure camp), three-story jumps from a local extreme water park (Greensprings in New Bern, NC), etc. I just enjoy those activities and plan to someday also learn how to skydive, base jump, parasail, and scuba dive. At the time, I knew it was against the rules, but I did not know it was actually illegal to jump from the pier. In my mind, I thought what I was doing wasn’t putting other people in danger, only myself, though it really wasn’t a very dangerous activity relative to other jumps I’ve made. I knew the activity was against the rules, but I believed it not to be immoral.

5. What consequences were paid for your actions?

Both Bryan and I were issued citations as we sat in the patrol car while he wrote them, and given separate court dates for appearance before a judge. Bryan’s court date was scheduled in August, 2010, mine was scheduled for September 21, 2010. Bryan and his mother had to return to North Carolina from upstate New York for his court appearance, and my mother and I accompanied them for the day.

The four of us spent the entire day in Pender County Court. There were many cases presented during the day, some for drunk driving, assault on a female, gang-related violence and assault with bodily harm, assault with a deadly weapon. Bryan’s case was not heard until the very end. When Bryan stepped up before the judge and the local Assistant District Attorney, who saw for the first time the charges against him, they shared a laugh, shook their heads, and declared that in all their years of law they had never seen charges brought for jumping from a pier. Bryan pled Prayer for Justice, which meant he admitted his guilt and promised never to do it again. My dad spoke with someone in the Assistant DA’s office, and my charges were dismissed as they felt it was a waste of court resources.

6. What did you learn as a result?

Although I did not have to attend court for my citation, I learned a lot when I had to accompany my friend to court. I learned that though I may think my actions don’t affect others, every action does, though not always in the way one thinks it will. I learned to think before every action in order to make the best decision, rather than act on impulse. I also learned to look at every action from a different perspective. Although jumping from the pier is a daring, exciting act from my view, another may see it as irresponsible or foolish.

7. Has anything like this ever happened before or since?

No.

8. Do you have anything else to disclose to us at this time?

I hope that this event does not jeopardize my chance of acceptance into the Academy. I felt that jumping from the pier falls under the same category as all of the extreme sports in which I participate (surfing, kiteboarding, skiing, snowboarding, etc). I am willing to take reasoned risks. I recognize the danger and determine whether the risk is worth the challenge. With my lifelong desire to be a naval officer, I would be willing to take necessary risks that I know face every military officer in order to protect my country and comrades.

The rainbow

Before Hans died I used to wonder how a grieving mother could survive without believing in heaven and in the chance to see her child again. I am also a bit like Harry Houdini’s wife, expecting a definitive sign from Hans that he’s really in heaven and that I will get to see him again. I haven’t gotten one. Neither did Bess Houdini. My doubt now is a burden. Maybe Hans is in heaven sending me little signs and I am too cynical to see them, and he’s frustrated with me. Or what we call signs are really just coincidences, anomalies, and happenstance, mostly all explainable.

Eric believes in heaven more than I do. We regularly walk on the beach where Hans and Zatha surf, when one day, while talking about Hans, a beautiful rainbow appeared. Eric smiled and said hello to Hans. I asked him how he could think that this big rainbow, seen simultaneously by thousands of people and easily explained by science, could be a sign to us from Hans. He said that any angels in heaven who had a loved one on earth in sight of the rainbow gathered together to show us the rainbow as a collective sign of their love for us. I’d like to think it’s true, but I’ll always be waiting for that, “OMG, that’s really Hans” sign.

Until then I wish I could carry all that heavy sadness for Eric, for Zatha, so that someone in our family can jump a little higher and shine a little brighter since our world is a lot dimmer without Hans.