Vox Populi
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Alexis Rhone Fancher: Stages of Grief
The grief does its best to kill me. That is the truth. 17 years since my son’s death, and still, each night when my husband drifts off, I watch movies, write, or read. Anything to stay awake. I know I’ll dream of my boy, wake up at 3am, devastated, like he died all over again. Better to stave off dreaming. Zombie through my sleep deprived life.
17 years dead, and still I mourn my boy. Cry myself to sleep, punch drunk on devastation by dawn. That Kübler-Ross timeline, the stages of grief, is at best, a hopeful deception. A joke, her one-size-fits-all model for mourning a slap in the face of those stricken. The truth? Grief is relentless; it does its best to kill you. If you’re not careful, it will leach all the joy out of life.
Each night after my husband drifts off, I cry myself to sleep. We pretend he doesn’t hear me. We both know my tears are futile, or even self-destructive. But there’s always something, a song on the radio or a TV commercial, a character in the novel I’m reading, the inevitable cute little boy, hair a halo of blond curls, a dead ringer for my son.
I tune in true crime shows like 20/20, and Forensic Files, pay close attention to coping skills; maybe I’ll learn something. Tonight I’m watching yet another edition of Dateline.This time the sad tale of a 17-year old girl, murdered on a California beach. I’m waiting for the joyful crescendo, the missing son or daughter, grandparent, husband or wife, miraculously found unharmed, just a little sleep deprived, loopy.
Here’s what I want. I want the grief to stop. A final night of weep and howl, then it lets me go, and moves on. Finds someone else to torment. I want to put an end to the ceaseless needling of the open wound I call my heart. I want to be free of the stuck on repeat desolation that even now, 17 years later, won’t let me be. It’s here, waiting, just around the corner. Truth is, it takes a nanosecond to drop into that devastation, and an eternity to find my way back.
Today, when I share one of the poems about my dead son on Facebook, some kind person comments. “Your son was so fortunate to have you as his mother.” I shake my head. No, I want to say. A good mother, would have saved him.
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Poet/photographer Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, The
American Journal of Poetry, Spillway, Plume, Diode,The Pedestal Magazine, Duende, Vox
Populi, Gargoyle, Elysium Review, and elsewhere. Her photos are published worldwide.
She’s authored ten poetry collections, most recently, TRIGGERED, (MacQueens) and BRAZEN. (NYQ). A coffee table book of over 100 of Alexis’ photographs of Southern California poets will be published by Moon Tide Press in early 2025. She calls the Mojave Desert home.
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Poem and image copyright 2025 Alexis Rhone Fancher
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“The truth? Grief is relentless; it does its best to kill you. If you’re not careful, it will leach all the joy out of life.”
That is the naked truth.
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I nearly died of grief after my sister’s suicide. And even now, 16 years later, I carry the memory like a wound.
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Yes, “like a wound” 💔
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Indeed, there is no one-fits-all solution, and I often thought about it: friends have lost their children (I have been protected so far) and there can be no greater loss than a child dying before the mother. I can’t even imagine the grief.
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We who have also buried a child cry with you. The awful truth is that grief never goes away because there is no away.
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My first instinct is to yearn to fix this devastation somehow, to find some consoling word. But there are realities beyond fixing, beyond words, that demand only silence, presence, attending.
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There’s no fixing the grief of a mother.
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so honest and vulnerable.
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Yes, it is.
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A poem that breathes vividly as the bright orchid that lives even against its black and while background…
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Yes
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Devastating, brutally honest, this beauty and your shared, open suffering, Dear One. I yearn for the impossible pain to let you go and I thank you for your art. XO
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Thank you, dear Alexis — dear one, for this piece. Tears in my eyes for that beautiful boy of yours. And you. I have read many of your poems of grief, & return to them from time to time. I, too, know what it is to loose a child. So all I want to do is give you a very, very long & quiet hug.
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Thanks for sharing this deep grief that never ends for you. Terrible.
Circumstances differ for us grievers; after 7 years of deep grief over the death of a beloved spouse, the darkness finally seems to have mostly lifted. Humor returned, constant grief memories of the agonies of her end times turned to joy at what we had created over 32 years. But she was not my child, that must be much more overwhelming.
During the first 3 years of her absence, I wrote over 2000 poems, mostly entangled with that grief. none ever revised or read again. All that agony is now enshrined on a flashdrive. They were a form of self-therapy. Some were even dialogues with Pam. In retrospect, writing helped me immensely. And the part of me grieving alone, found respite there.
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My heart hurts for you. I lost a child 55 years ago and I’m still grieving.
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Dear Laure-Anne, thank you. I’m so sorry that you, too, know the devastation of losing a child. I’m loving your new book, Lately. It is brilliant, of course. Thank you for the very very long & quiet hug. I hope our paths cross soon.
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Thank you for sharing the nakedness of grief so beautifully. I share your loss of a beloved son long ago but it hurts every day and not just at night. What a harsh lesson in the miracle of life. What a gift that you dream about him. I am still waiting
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Thank you for sharing this, Mandy.
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