Whose tragedy is this anyway?
Drew Carey will not be hosting
This is part of a maybe never ending series. Here is part one, part two, and part three.
We last left our heroine reeling from her father claiming that he was possessed by her dead husband.
I did what I always did after my dad's experience during Ben's Aaronic priesthood ordination. I had a private mini-meltdown in my bedroom, then did my best to put on my best people-pleasing face and sit down to listen.
It was a lot.
On one hand, I was hungry for any kind of 'proof' that Eric still existed. But I was confused too. If Eric continued to exist and had the ability to show himself, why would he show himself to my father and not to us? Especially knowing how strained my relationship with my father was/is? Also, why appear during a Mormon priesthood blessing?
Whether you believe in Mormonism or not, I find it sus that all of my dad's special experiences always confirmed his one, singular, and very narrow worldview. And now he had a conveniently dead son-in-law to use as a tool; a thing he could use to reinforce his position of spiritual authority in our family and in his community.
And here's the thing: Eric would not consent to be used in this way.
And excuse me, appearances and visions aside, Eric would not GET INSIDE my father. Just... no.
Because Mormons believe in the Bible, they technically believe possession is possible, but it's not really a thing that comes up a lot at church or in friendly neighborhood conversation, at least not anymore. Joseph Smith and the early church was more into the concept than modern day Mormons are.
If possession does come up in Mormon circles, it's negative; it's about evil spirits, not benevolent ones. There might be some stories from early church history about benevolent possession but I do not have the brain capacity to do a deep dive and find them. In my cursory search, I couldn't find any. None come to mind and I'd say I'm pretty well-versed in the weirder side of Mormon folklore.
Even my dad, who believes in a lot of outrageous things, said, in a highly emotional state after his experience, "I didn't know that was possible."
A week or two prior to the ordination, my sister had come up and helped me clean out the garage. We'd talked frankly about my faith crisis and all the difficulty I was having with dad. I knew she'd probably go home and give my parents a Reader's Digest version, but I didn't know my parents took her suggestion that we talk face to face seriously, nor that they'd made a plan to do so without talking to me first.
We weren't even two months out from Eric's death on the day Ben was ordained. And no, I'm not entirely sure why we went ahead with this particular milestone. Ben wasn't sure what he felt about church and it was difficult for him to contemplate moving forward with a milestone his father should have been there for. I felt some self-imposed pressure to 'do the thing' to reassure my in laws and my parents that we were okay. In retrospect, we should have held off. I had a kid struggling with panic attacks and suicidal ideation and we would be checking him into a mental hospital in a couple more months; my bedroom ceiling was torn out because of a mold situation in the attic and I'd been screwed over by a restoration company.
Coordinating with the bishop, inviting family up, sitting with Ben as he tearfully tried to choose which grandfather to ordain him in place of his father... it was already a lot. So, after it all... after the... er, possession experience, I was stunned when my parents announced they'd be coming back in the morning so we could have a come to Jesus conversation about whatever condensed version of my faith crisis they'd heard from my sister.
I just couldn't believe this was a priority. I was in the very early, very raw days of grief, juggling things I had no business juggling. What I (desperately) needed was my father to show up with a toolbox and fix my ceiling, not show up and claim my dead husband's ghost got inside of him and took over a priesthood blessing. 🤯
I was already depleted from the shitstorm that was my life, I hadn't begun to process my dad and his big, eclipsing experiences, and as no plan had been made, I was not free the following day. We had an awkward conversation at the door as I tried to sort out how to accommodate their unusual extended stay. But then hours later, I got a text from my mother saying they had decided to head home.
I fell apart crying. I felt the weight of my mother's stress and the rejection she felt because I hadn't been more enthusiastic about their surprise meeting. But I didn't want to have a conversation yet. I wasn't prepared. How was I supposed to explain my faith crisis to my parents when it involved telling them that I'd realized dad was nuts?
I've had to dig into my journals to piece together this whole timeline, and I'm not going to lie... it has been so hard. I'm reading entries I'm really glad I wrote down, but they break my heart all over again. I really want to move this story forward, get to the part where my parents force a conversation before I am ready, but I guess I just need to pause here for a minute and admit that I'm so angry.
The day after the ordination, a friend took my two younger kids snowboarding. Doing things like this was so hard... it still is in lots of ways, but almost three years is not almost three months. For Ben, especially, just barely 12 years old and still such a kid, you know? Not a tween yet... not looking at all like the man-sized 14.5 year old he is today. He's feeling his father's loss so keenly, and having a break from it, going snowboarding... it was a mixed bag. Fun, but painful. He came home, changed out of his wet clothes, and got in bed next to me.
Like his dad, he had a hard time finding words to express his big emotions. It took some time but he finally got out that he had run away when he heard me tell Jake to call 911 the night Eric died. In my head, the kids are all there, watching as this horrible, horrible thing happens. And for a lot of it, they were. But while his dad was struggling to breathe, and I was giving the first responder on the phone our address, Ben ran away, terrified.
He was full of guilt, feeling like he should have stayed, wishing he'd been able to say goodbye.
I tried to soothe that regret while honoring his feelings. I told him we all had regrets and things we wished we had been able to do or say before dad died, and that even if dad's death had somehow been as perfect as a death could be, we'd still have really big feelings about it. None of us got the chance to say goodbye, not even me... who was beside him the whole time. I tried to make sure Ben understood that feeling guilty, regretful, sad, anxious, and angry was normal. I wasn't going to try to erase his feelings or tell him he shouldn't feel what he feels. But also reassure him that no situation where we lost dad so young would feel great.
We talked about a lot of other things that night too; he cried about not having dad around to coach his baseball team that spring, how hard it was to wake up every morning and remember all over again that his dad had died, and how weird it was to be around friends and cousins that still had their fathers.
This is where my focus should have been. It shouldn't have been pulled in any other direction. And in spite of it all, I did a damn good job prioritizing my kids and us and our grief. But it's infuriating how many other things were loaded on top by people who should have been doing all they could to protect and help us.
The worst part is, neither of my parents made my life harder on purpose. They thought we'd sit down and I'd tell them I was having a hard time with church history; that I'd left because of polygamy or the priesthood ban. I'm sure they both thought dad would be able to answer my questions and assuage my doubts, just as he'd always done. They were trying to help; they had no idea how big it all was and that's because I didn't want them to know. Because I had hoped, by keeping it to myself, that I would be able to protect them both from hurt, confusion, and stress.
I talked to my brother about what had happened during Ben's ordination; I needed to process it all with someone who understood what dad was like.
My brother wrote something I saved:
"Their ideas—dad’s ideas and blessings and spirituality stuff—and Eric’s presence are not intrinsically tied. I know you know that. Mom and dad don’t know that. I don’t believe they are capable of wrapping their heads around the idea that anyone in the world could have a spiritual experience and have it mean something other than affirming their own beliefs.
"I can accept Eric pushing through in spite of dad. I just can’t believe it’s because of dad or that it affirms anything about dad’s beliefs... which is what dad wants whether or not he admits it.
In fact, I like the idea of Eric pushing through in spite of dad a lot. Because of course he would."
Neither my brother or I know what to think about the afterlife. He probably leans more atheist while I remain a hopeful agnostic; meaning, he leans more toward "probably nothingness" after we die, while I remain hopeful that there is more, though willing to accept that there might be nothing. So it meant a lot to me that he wouldn't immediately throw a 'sign' of Eric's continued existence out the window, even when, for us, it was grossly connected to our probably seriously mentally ill father.
I liked how he separated it from our dad and gave words to something I'd been feeling but had been unable to articulate. It was still so new to me, this idea that there could be faith or hope without all roads leading back to my father's worldview.
Years ago, when it was time for our blind, diabetic, arthritic dog Lucy to cross the rainbow bridge, Eric and I went with her to the vet. She was about 14 years old, still wagging her tail, but the time had come. Eric and I drove home after holding her as she passed, crying so hard we were unable to speak. We'd walked other pets to the end of their lives, but there was something different about Lucy. I don't know if it's because she loved Eric the hardest, or if it was because she'd been with us the longest. But it was devastating. Especially for Eric, who had cared for her so well as her health failed. He'd given her twice-daily insulin injections, checked her blood sugar, and cleaned up as her bowels failed. He kept her by his side in the shop and carried her when she couldn't walk.
Caption: Cooper, Lucy (foreground), and Eric at the lake.
But it was my dad (who had never let us have a dog growing up, who would wrinkle his nose at the mere idea of dog poop) who called to tell me after he'd found out about Lucy, that he had been out in the field behind their house on the day she died, and how he'd looked up when he felt her presence & saw her dog spirit racing across the sky, giving him a happy bark 'hello.'
This story hurt my husband to his core. Why? Why would Lucy appear to my dad and not to him? The one who loved her most? Who did all the things my dad never wanted to be burdened with? We tried to reason the hurt away: Maybe my dad had spiritual gifts we did not. Maybe we were hurting too much to recognize a visitation. But we were just gaslighting ourselves. Back then we could not see that centering himself in someone else's story was a constant with my dad.
My dad would bring up this story at family parties for years afterward. Any time he and mom came to visit; any time Eric and I were down in Utah, he'd get misty-eyed and remind us of the time when Lucy paid him, of all people, a postmortem visit.
Finally I told my dad to please never tell the story again. I explained how much it hurt Eric, something I knew my father would not want to do intentionally. My dad felt awful; he was so sorry. He had no idea. He thought he was sharing beauty and hope, not co-opting someone else's relationship with their beloved pet.
To his credit, he never told the story again. Not to us anyway. But he didn't learn anything. The pattern continues.
My brother told me that when our father called to tell him Eric had died, dad claimed to have had a premonition; that he had known something bad was happening.
That conversation should have been about me and my children; their sadness for me; their sadness to lose a son- and brother-in-law. It should not have been about how my dad knew it was coming because he is so inseparably tied to god and the beyond. It should not be yet another vehicle for him to reaffirm his position as our family's infallible spiritual authority.
A little over a week later, when they were coming up for Eric's small, pathetic, pandemic-restricted funeral, my brother pulled my father aside and told him, under no circumstances was he to claim a vision of Eric or share any kind of dream about him with us. He was to keep his mouth shut and show up for his daughter and grandchildren.
And he did. But I guess he forgot two and a half months later when it was time to give his grandson a priesthood blessing.
I guess that's a good a place to stop as any. Part five shouldn't take as long as this one did.
xo J