Grief And Dandelions At The U.S. Military Academy

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Oh, grief, you ruthless friend, what will you teach me today? You showed up in my car the other day and all I wanted was to shove you out the window — but I couldn’t.

Grief does what it will. It comes, destroys, and leaves me to build the new person I’ll become — with the potential for acceptance, which will take time to cash in. Perhaps it’s a tutorial for my death one day.

I was driving to upstate NY from Virginia to a writer’s retreat with my fellow Medium.com humor pub editors to lounge around, write, laugh, critique, and grow into deeper friends. I’d done it a year ago, so I knew the score. And like the year before, I’d stop to say hi to my dad who lives at the U.S. Military Academy — West Point.

My dad moved there two years ago and lives in an urn housed within a memorial wall that the Class of 1964 gifted to the cemetery on the campus grounds. I’ve been to the campus several times, dating back to high school when I went to track camp there and the place grew familiar.

I dined, slept, and ran up and down a hill there for a week as a young person. Whenever I visit, the place isn’t simply a monumental piece of history — both my country’s and my dad’s — but the place where I developed a crush on some random lacrosse player at an adjacent camp whom I got to talk to briefly one day and that was about it.

This recent visit was different. As soon as I was a half-hour south of West Point, I lost it. I felt that rebel-catch in my throat, the message from my brain that there is no chance I’ll override this. The floodgate opened and soon I was sobbing and groping my way up the Palisades Parkway in NY state.

While this seemed normal enough, for some reason it didn’t stop, nor did it lessen in power — it only strengthened like a nasty hurricane with no eye, no hope, no mercy. Why? I don’t know.

I went with it, stepped out of its way, and let it run its course — which a hurricane-sized sob will do. But this one didn’t. It kept going, like it was plowing through Florida to Maine, into Canada, through Newfoundland, Iceland, Norway, and ravaging Europe. It was an odd terror I had no influence over, despite gathering myself numerous times only to be hit broadside again.

Then I arrived at the entrance gate to West Point and pulled up to the security kiosk. I waited for the security guard to approach as the hurricane sob peeked out of my throat, hunched on all fours, waiting.

“Ma’am, may I help you?”

“I’m here to visit my dad,” I told the young man.

“Your dad is here?”

“Yes,” I answered, the sob standing up on two feet, getting ready. “He lives here in an urn in the cemetery.”

It took a second, but then his face changed, and he said in a soft, loving voice, “Ohhh.”

Then the sob took off, whirling through me, clearly with no respect for serious military security checkpoints.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m like this,” I apologized. “I left my two-year pass at home. Can I get a quick day pass?”

“Do you have your driver’s license on you?” the man said, in one of the kindest voices I’ve ever heard. I pulled out my license, he scanned it, looked at his handheld screen, and gave it back.

“You know what? Just go on in. It’s okay. Do you need help getting there? Can we help you in any way?”

Was he serious? The folks at West Point surely had more important things to do than guiding a sobbing middle-aged lady to the cemetery. My heart was caught forever in the love this young man was showing me.

“I’m okay. I know my way. Thank you. You don’t even know.” And with that, I drove off to see my dad — or the plaque on the wall that marks his new home away from home.

While West Point is a college campus, it’s quite a bit more. It’s a part of America’s history. In the cemetery alone, there are scads of military giants of American history, dating to the Revolutionary War.

As I made my way across the cemetery grounds to the wall with the urns of the graduates of 1964, I slowly gathered any flowering weed I could find on the ground — dandelions, violets, and ground ivy.

I placed the small, feeble bouquet on the stone wall above my dad’s plaque. You can bring beautiful store-bought bouquets and place them around the wall, but at the end of the day — as I was informed — groundskeepers dump them in the trash. That’s how you keep a cemetery looking spiffy.

“Hey, Dad,” I said to the plaque, “I brought you flowers — not quite like the ones you used to cultivate, but they’re locally grown.” I pointed to the lawn. My dad didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say next, so I scanned the area for birds.

“How’s the birding here? I don’t see any birds. Do you get to see many?” He didn’t answer, but I suspect it’s because birds steer clear of cemeteries. Too many tears ruining the vibe.

Even though my dad wasn’t saying much — or anything — I liked our one-sided conversation. It felt like a sad silliness I would now put on the shelf of my history with my dad, and this was a positive. Our history wasn’t always easy for us.

Oh, the things we learn too late.

I used to date a guy whose sister had researched Vietnam War veterans returning from the trauma of battle. Those vets from that war were the subject of early PTSD research and understanding.

This corner of the psychology field was in its infancy back then. Our family, along with many others, grew up without understanding PTSD. Even now I don’t think we know as much as we could. Think of how much struggle in the world might be saved — or better supported — if we knew more about how people operate and why they do what they do.

Add ADHD to this mix, of which my sister and I have only recently been diagnosed. ADHD is about as heritable as height — meaning quite heritable. There were clear signs of it in my father, but who knows? Either way, it's just been over the last 6-7 years I've learned about the struggles attributed to this little ole thinking style, as we call it in the ADHD world.

What does all this mean? It means knowledge takes time. Many of us will die before we come to know what’s behind our struggles, and many will die before we come to know what’s behind others'.

To my mind, this is about giving grace — to ourselves and others — for those times when behavior doesn’t match one’s best self. It’s about learning what we can about the ways people struggle. The more we know, the easier it is to be a gracemaker. Informed perspectives generate wisdom which generates grace. I think it can be the reverse, too. Giving grace can make you wise.

It’s tough to learn these things after it’s too late. This makes for hurricane sobs. But over time, I’ll become wiser and I’ll accept. This is my plan because I’m wise enough to know I’d rather have acceptance than the alternative.

Let’s see what next year’s drive to West Point brings. I’ll bring dandelions and hope — a bouquet of acceptance of the things that bloom where we wish they wouldn’t. These bouquets teach us about grace, which is beauty. And maybe next year there’ll be birds.

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Be well, my friends.