The Science and Heart of Loss
Kelly and her beloved mom, Mary.
Using concepts of science, spirituality, and personal experience to heal from PTSD and grief
Written by: Kelly McDonagh
Before I got a new iPhone I had made sure all my voicemails from my mom were saved. I remember crying in the Verizon store when the man working told me it wasn’t possible to save my voicemails . He was shocked by my reaction as I broke down right there in the middle of the store in uncontrollable tears and then after scrambling to think of solutions, he figured out a way to save them (turns out it was a super simple solution all along) . Hearing her voicemails is an incredibly visceral experience. It immediately feels warm and comforting. Then an empty feeling of absence precedes. By visceral I mean, when I listen to her voicemails, I can close my eyes and sense her so vividly like the experience is really playing out chemically in my brain and body. I can sense the texture and scent of her hair, the way her skin feels, and I can feel myself gazing into her eyes. In a way I think this is what it means when people say after a loved one dies ‘they are always with you ‘ which at first bothered me as it seemed elusive, formal, and an incongruent attempt at saying the ‘right’ thing. I am not bothered by this anymore, not only because the hopeless despair stage has subsided, but because now there is meaning to it. And loving-kindness.
What was supposed to be a time of celebration and a vacation with my parents turned into my worst nightmare. We went to visit my youngest brother in Colorado. Me, newly engaged and feeling on top of the world, and my brother Kevin who had just bought his first house next to a lake, where we were all headed to stay for a week. My parents were from Connecticut, and I live in Hawaii and Kevin, in Colorado, so it isn’t often we get to spend time with our parents. Our first day in Kevin’s new house and we went out on the boat to do a little wake surfing. Kevin went first, I went second, and then Chris, my then fiancé. We all had done wake surfing before and got up with no problems! The water was cold and we were at high altitude. My mom has always been athletic and I told her she should try it. She at first refused, and said she was out of shape. I convinced her to try anyway and she agreed. Getting up while wake surfing requires some strength as the boat begins to speed up and you therefore have to resist with a bent knee position and strong arms. We tried three times and she wasn’t able to stand up on the board. This is normal and usually takes several tries. But after the third try, she said she was done and swam back to the boat. She immediately started complaining about an intense headache and laid down on the back seat. Five minutes later, she threw up off the side of the boat.
We were all confused. We thought ‘did she get a concussion?’ but no one saw her hit her head on anything.
She never even stood up on the surfboard. She was out there for 5 minutes. We made our way back to the boat launch, concerned about our mom, and her and my dad got off the boat and went back to Kevin’s. Chris, Kevin and I stayed on the boat for a few minutes longer to get it prepared to take out of the water and discuss what we thought might have happened. We all felt a little headache because of the cold water and falling off the surfboard. We thought maybe it’s the high altitude and cold water? What if she got a concussion though? Her symptoms fit the bill, but it didn’t seem possible because she didn’t hit her head. We were perplexed and came back to the house to google her symptoms and decide if she needed to go to the hospital. She was aversive to the suggestion of going to the hospital. We all decided to let her rest, and keep checking on her.
The next morning, she claimed she felt better, but still needed to rest as her headache was still in the background but not nearly as intense. I remember laying in bed with her that morning and having a clear conversation with her. She was so happy to be together but felt guilty she wasn’t feeling well. I told her it wasn't her fault and I massaged her neck and head for a little while.
My mom and I had a super close and special relationship. We were very similar and understood things about each other it seemed others couldn’t. We had a very special love.
That day, she and my dad stayed home and rested. My dad wanted to stay and keep an eye on her. Kevin, his girlfriend, Chris and I, went out for a day hike and came back later right before dinner time, where at that point we decided to go out for dinner. My mom said to my dad, ‘go ahead, I’ll stay here and rest, bring me home something’. So we drove to the closest town, 30 minutes to Silverthorne, Colorado. We went out to dinner, shared appetizers and wine, laughed and talked, and everything felt so great. Once we got home, Kevin went to check on my mother, which at first sounded like she was snoring. He quickly realized something was seriously wrong. She had labored breathing, and wasn’t responding to his questions. Kevin came to me and said ‘Kelly, we need to take mom to the hospital right now’. My heart began to race and when we went back into her room, she was having a seizure. At this point we are all completely freaking out. We were deep in the mountains and it would take a long time for an ambulance to get there. We decided to get her in the car and take her to Silverthorne (the closest town), where at that point we could meet with an ambulance that could get her to a hospital. Kevin is driving super fast, I’m in the front seat. Chris, my dad and my mom are in the back seat. My dad holding her, begging her ‘to keep breathing, stay with us, we are going to get you help, you're going to be ok, we love you, we are here, stay with us Mary, please, keep breathing’. I was completely disconnected from my body, in extreme terror, and seeing my beloved mom on the verge of what I did not know was going to be her death. The ambulance finally arrived, right as she began to have another seizure and they took her away. At this point she screamed so loudly and clenched onto my father, a death grip that was beyond her physical strength. Her scream was also a primal sound that didn’t sound like her own voice and was unrecognizable as coming from my mother.
I was so terrified, I just cried while Chris held me saying ‘she’s going to be ok, she’s going to be ok’. I was hopeful, but so terrified.
She was life flighted to a Denver hospital, where they finally notified us she suffered a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which is when an aneurysm in the brain bursts and causes bleeding in the brain. The prognosis is not good, and death is likely if immediate brain surgery isn’t done. The bleeding in the brain causes brain damage, more and more as time goes on, and at that point it had been over 48 hours. The doctors told us they would try the brain surgery to drain the blood from her brain, but she would either have severe brain damage, or it might be too late. The surgery was unsuccessful, and she was pronounced brain dead very shortly after. Then we had several days in the hospital while she was connected to life support, finding donors for most of her healthy organs.
I couldn’t believe it. I was 28 and I just lost my mother. It’s not fair, she was so young, 59.
I was so excited to give her a grandchild, and now she can never meet my children. I couldn’t fathom this reality. I cannot picture my life without my mother. I was absolutely devastated. I was completely heart broken.
The memory of this scene kept me awake and created flashbacks and nightmares for countless nights. Her death scream penetrated my soul and carried with it a deep haunting in which I’ve grew quite adept at dissociating from the memories, the pain, and at times reality. I tried out a few different therapists but hated recalling these memories as they became so painful and would spiral me into a week’s long bout of grief and depression, so avoided therapy.
I felt responsible for her death, since I convinced her to try wake surfing, which is what caused her aneurysm to burst.
She didn’t want to do it at first, why did I need to pressure her? What if we had taken her to the hospital sooner? Would she have survived then? How can I ever forgive myself? If I just let her have her way, she would probably still be alive right now. It’s all my fault. This was my thought process, for months. Surely PTSD and bereavement were the clinical explanation of what I had experienced and I am one of the lucky ones who have come so far in this healing journey I can barely recognize myself even just one year ago. A dark cloud hovered over my horizons and I experienced disassociation which is a subtype of PTSD, as an adaptive mechanism to process the pain. I felt irritated by the ‘advise’ people were giving me. ‘Keep moving forward, keep your head up, She’s still with you, god always has a plan, trust’. But how? 5 months later my older brother died, which is a whole other story. The compounding grief of my mother and brother was unbearable to take on in one go of it. So little by little the pain would seep in, in waves as grief will have you, and ptsd flashbacks hijacking my nervous system regularly. I was tired of feeling tired and in pain. I had no zest for life and my creativity, was temporarily suspended.
Ptsd is a recoverable disease for many. The brain chemistry changes, the hippocampus shrinks in size and there is difficulty with the mechanisms in which short term memory is transmitted into long term memory. Memories and nightmares arrest the central nervous system until the stress response system has reached a sustained level of cortisol which poses health risks. This is known as allostatic load. This is incredibly depleting to the organism at large. I was in the thick of it. Full on survival brain and struggling to remember anything other than feeding myself and my dog. For the first time in two years, I can confidently say I am lucky to be recovering. I am privileged to have the tools.
It’s been 2 years and I can tell this story without crying or spiraling into sadness. I’m beginning to notice life’s synchronicities again. The signs and symbols, like when you have a thought about a person and see them 5 minutes later, or words on the radio showing up on street signs. Those went away for a while. My playfulness and silly-ness is coming back. That went away too. But these qualities aren’t just coming back, they are transformed as the shattering of my heart and its wounds have become teachers that have provided the insight that feeling free of pain is the greatest blessing, the highest priority, and I am fully responsible for making that happen.
What happened to me isn’t going to define the rest of my life, will not be my demise and I will not become victimized by my pain, and if I adopt this victim role, I will not survive.
Meanwhile I am studying holistic health and alternative medicine, and have implemented the mind/body/spirit practices that I’ve been studying. I’ve studied the science behind breathwork and meditation, qi gong and yoga, herbalism, and much more. My field of expertise is the blending of science and spirituality, folk medicine, and mind body spirit practices, but now I am my own patient, and I have become my own healer. There is so much richness, so much depth, so much beauty in this life, and I am committed to the path of rewiring my nervous system, healing trauma, and healing the wounds in my heart, so I can experience bliss, longevity, and positive wellbeing. I am committed to the path of healing the pain that will make me sick if I don’t. I am responsible. I am empowered.
Step back and gaze upon your life with loving eyes. We become lost in the mundane and our gratitude dissipates, fixating on trivial matters, outside of our control. Outside of our nervous system. We forget the beauty of just feeling alive. It’s like when we get injured and we realize we should have been grateful for our able bodies all along. Or when we make people bad ‘others’ only to realize just how much humanity we have in common. Life is filled with adversity, we must learn how to cope, and how to heal, ourselves.
What if I told you the most valuable tool you could ever learn is how to regulate your own nervous system, and that with practice, it can become quite simple.
The first lesson- notice when you're ‘aroused’. Tune in and notice the pace of your heart, the quality of the breath, the temperature of the body, and any constrictions in the body. These are all psychophysiological bio markers of a stress response that you can become very skilled in detecting immediately while your chances of influencing a parasympathetic response are the greatest. Biofeedback is a great tool if you don’t even know where to start to develop this keen awareness. A mindful check in with yourself can also illuminate any signs of stress.
I think when people say cliche things to someone who is grieving like ‘their spirit lives on through you’ , know that it is natural to feel put off by this at first.As time has gone on, I’ve come to understand these words with true meaning. These rituals, like listening to her voicemails invoke in my body an extremely intimate and visceral sense of her that I can palpably feel, makes the sentient offered above carry more weight. Grief counselors, death doulas, and mediums will advise a ritual practice of connecting to a past loved one whether it be dancing, or playing music, lighting a candle , taking walks, or visiting an old place, whatever brings you that sense of connection, as a totem for keeping them in your hearts, keeping them with you, as the saying goes. There is now scientific understanding, that the pineal gland, may have some role to play in connecting with quantum fields, or, other realities, that our conscious minds’ cannot do, and that through meditation, this can be accessed. This can be another ritual for connection.
‘Heart coherence’ defined as a state of cooperative alignment between the heart, mind, emotions and physical systems is the increase in the coherence of heart rate variability (HRV) and can be utilized through slow breathing with the exhales 2 seconds longer than the inhales, commonly used counts are 4 and 6 or 5 and 7. Heart coherence is an incredibly effective state that combats the chemical reaction in physiological systems of negative emotional states. Heart coherence is the scientific term for ‘flow state’ or being calm, focused, relaxed, and in a positive emotional state, which shows a plethora of health benefits, and we know this can be accessed through a multitude of different ways ranging from yoga to meditation and breath work. Being in states of heart coherence is incredibly healing and works to rewire neurological patterning of trauma and it’s misaligned stress responses.
For those of you struggling with trauma and/or grief, know that this pain isn’t permanent, and in that pain there is teachings, more profound and natural understanding’s of life. This pain plants seeds of wisdom. Know that there are tools that can assist you in your healing journey with trauma and grief. Turn in towards yourself, get to know your nervous system, pay attention to the body and mind. Know that the path is not linear and your commitment to yourself free of pain will be a rewarding path. But it will not be easy. You cannot escape the pain or buy it deep down with temporary dopamine hits like sex and drugs, it will surely resurface in either obvious or non obvious ways. Some days will be harder than others, and that's ok. You can learn the tools to rewire and regulate your nervous system. You will need to show up for yourself over and over again. You will need social support. You will need to believe in yourself.
A beautiful photo of the lake at Kelly’s family home in Connecticut
For me it took awhile to not see the final moments of my mom’s life, which were chaotic and heart wrenching, but to really see her in her true essence and beauty. Breathing, exercise, yoga, discipline, rest, meditation, nature, practicing self compassion, studying, all have contributed to helping do just that. To remember her in her exquisiteness, not the pain around the last few days of her life. It’s been 2 years and the trauma has eased drastically, and for that I’m incredibly grateful. My commitment to doing the work has immensely healed my brain and body, from the programed responses that PTSD can construct. I am committed to helping people who have gone though what I have, as my education has given me the knowledge and skills, and my experience has given me the insight and the proof that a wellness based lifestyle and practices that enable heart coherence are a remedy for trauma and grief. Many conventional MD’s might prescribe you medicine for depression or anxiety, but this does not treat the cellular level of trauma, nor does it address the nuances and individual differences of trauma, psychologically and physiologically, and can keep you dependent on a profit driven pharmacotherapy system, not to mention the host of other side effects that go along with these types of medications. Learning that we have the tools already is an empowering message that can break the shackles of the PTSD ‘victim’ that is imprisoned by their pain and memory. We can control our destiny.
