| OCR Text |
Show Rhoda Akiko lyoya 31 My impulse was to be angry at God for having this happen to me, and yet, through my life experience I felt, if I'm angry, if I turn away, what have I got? I've got nothing! That' really alii had. I was stripped completely bare. God's presence was the only thing I had. If I turned Him away, who was I kidding? There were other indications and signs that in spite of ourselves, God was there to lift us up. I stayed in San Jose to be near the other children while Nick went back to Japan. I was there by myself a lot of times, and most of the days were very quiet, but people would call and take me out to lunch or something like that. That community made all the difference in the world. Grief and Anger During the nine or ten hour flight back to the United States, I thought back about John, about who he was and why he would do all those things. The question of why is never answered and I couldn't stay on that. I had to get beyond. The thing that made me want to keep going were the other children. We still had them to live for. We wanted their lives to be whole again. I didn't want them to be crippled because I broke down, so that sustained me. I wanted to help them work through their anger too, for Janet was extremely angry. I didn't have to be so angry, for she was angry enough for me. She would call and be very angry, at Nick especially. I read that it was a time when marriages break down, almost 90 to 95% of the time, a very high ratio. The family splits apart because you blame everything and everybody. I realized that. I remembered my early childhood experience with my father to respect others whoever they were, whether they were your spouse or your children, to respect their space and who they were and then think about yourself. That was one time I couldn't say what I felt like saying and as I thought this through, I began to understand more. The Family Grieves All sorts of things came to my mind of what I could have said or what I could have done out of anger, especially Nick's move there. It was my husband's call, and yet, I was party to that too. One thing Janet said at our retirement party, was how angry she was. The children all got a part of the show and so she expressed how angry she was. I didn't tell her how she was supposed to feel. Then she said, "The thing that really turned me around was that despite what I said, despite who I was, you were always ready to accept me and never turned against me." That was my role at that time. When Nick came back, Janet could be very nasty, but she had expressed her anger. She could do that as a child whereas I could not as a spouse. It could have been different. Even in that we were sustained and helped by those around us so that we could carry on. It was a very difficult time. The thing that really helped me with Nick was when we got to Vassar College that first night. That first morning, the young people provided this beautiful house and they arranged for us to be in a house because we hadn't seen the children. They brought food in and they let us be family and we had this bedroom and outside the bedroom were birds chirping. It was misty. It was raining and you could see the birds coming to feed and it was a scene Bodie would have appreciated and it almost felt like Bodie was there and at that moment, Nick broke down and cried. Seeing him break down and cry, I could feel he was feeling it no matter what. I felt that any angry words that I had would hurt him more. He just sobbed. It was a release and he felt a lot better after that. |
