The Dark Den
We welcome guest blogger, Cindy Feldmeier. Cindy is a memoir essayist who rediscovered writing after the death of her 28-year-old daughter, Meghan. Cindy’s essay, “Faithful Traveler” was recently published in Publish Her Anthology: Dog Years’. Cindy finds comfort tending to her native garden yard in suburban Minneapolis. She also enjoys camping and spending time at her cabin in the northern woods of Wisconsin. Chance encounters with flora and fauna delight and inspire her. More of Cindy’s work can be found on her substack page.
I was recently with a small group who knew my story, my struggles, my loss; people I trusted. Someone brought up a movie about an alcoholic and there was laughter about the character’s struggle to avoid the liquor in his hotel room, to which he finally succumbs. Then, a question/statement to the group: Have we ever known an alcoholic?
Stunned, my heart seized, and my eyes filled with tears, the casual denigration of the alcoholic is familiar; I’ve heard people scorn and dismiss their struggle as a weakness. The world seems to believe the mentally ill and the alcoholic are other, not like us.
Yes, I’ve known, and I have loved an alcoholic, I wanted to shout. Instead, I hurried out the door, protecting my broken heart and my tears.
Driving home the car in front of me stopped. I glimpsed the bushy, red-tinged tail of a fox, as it disappeared under a white fence. Suddenly, two fox kits trotted out in front of the car. Red fur was just starting to show on their faces and tails. They looked at me with their yellow eyes before scampering to follow their mother. I rarely see foxes; they are expert at blending into the foliage.
Intuitively, the fox knows when to hide and when to move. I realized that, like the fox, I merged into the background in my grief and became paralyzed into silence.
My daughter, Meghan, battled with her mental health and alcohol, and ultimately died by suicide in October 2019. The first year and a half of my grief I lived in COVID-based isolation; a dark den. In private, with the closest of friends, I screamed my pain. Memories were agonizing; the future was impossible to imagine. I had no map to rebuild my life after this loss.
Like the fox, I felt comfortable in my seclusion. I camped alone, watching the water, listening to birds and began to heal.
When I thought I was ready to venture out of the safety of my den I found the world harsh. During my first outing, people took me aside to whisper, “I want you to know how sorry I am, but I don’t want to make you cry.” I wanted to shout, “I have a right to cry!”
There’s a stigma with mental illness, alcohol, suicide, and the death of a child. The story is shocking, and the reality of the loss is incomprehensible. I didn’t have the words to help others transcend this hurdle.
So, I returned to solitude to consider once again how to live in this world.
Meghan had all the warning signs of suicide ideation for the last three years of her life. Drinking, depression, anxiety, irritability, and shame. The addiction was a tangled weed growing like the Virginia Creeper in my yard. The big wooden roots are surprisingly difficult to remove, and the suction-like tendrils grow up the apple tree, camouflaged among the leaves. Unseen, the vine slowly chokes the apple tree.
Meghan was an expert at concealment. She drank before and during work. She kept wine in her car, filling her coffee cup on her cigarette breaks.
After her death, her therapists were stunned; they didn’t think she was suicidal. I had called them multiple times to warn them she was drinking and suicidal. They dismissed me as an overly concerned, meddlesome parent.
The weekend before she died, she had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, actively talking about suicide. Within three days, they released her. She knew the right words to convince everyone she was ok.
Seeing a fox can be a sign of change, revealing what might grow. I remember the fox kits' eyes, their curiosity and confidence. With time, I started to recognize I was ready to express the loss, the grief, the healing. I no longer needed to hide, to love and to suffer.
In my garden, the bold, brilliant red cardinal sings with gusto, flitting around the branches of my blue beech tree, dazzling against its deep green leaves. He plays in the water from my sprinkler. His mate is here, at my bird feeder, chirping her pleasure at breakfast. They are constant companions in my yard, confidently serenading me with their sacred songs. They remind me I, too, can sing.
