KENNY WROTE THE WORDS
"ENDLESS JOY" ON A PIECE
OF PAPER AND TAPED IT
ONTO A COLOGNE BOTTLE
SHORTLY BEFORE HE DIED.
HE NOW LIVES IN A
PLACE OF
ENDLESS JOY.
KENNY WROTE THE WORDS
"ENDLESS JOY" ON A PIECE
OF PAPER AND TAPED IT
ONTO A COLOGNE BOTTLE
SHORTLY BEFORE HE DIED.
HE NOW LIVES IN A
PLACE OF
ENDLESS JOY.
Kenny Rutz
Endless Joy
Organization
A HEALING HAVEN
FOR BEREAVED PARENTS
TO FIND COMFORT AND REST
ON THEIR JOURNEY FROM
MOURNING TO JOY
Blog
|
I can literally feel myself healing every day.
Like the Kintsugi process of repairing broken potterymixing
the urushi glue,
brushing it on,
fitting the pieces back together,
curing in a special box,
and the whole rest of the long process.
It is time-consuming,
it is messy,
it requires special tools.
It is also not what every pot needs.
Some pots never break,
some only have one piece to be repaired.
My pot, my life, needs a lot of time,
a lot of repair
especially in its isolated curing box.
I know this time is what I need.
I must continue to let go of my fears that this is how I will always be,
but also to be okay IF this IS how I will always be,
…..but I don’t really think so.
I believe a next new phase will come,
but I cannot push it or rush it.
Someday I will have people around me again;
I know I do have something to offer.
No, I will not be the same person I was.
But I will be more confident,
more intentional,
more authentic.
I may not be happy go lucky, all-out funny, or lighthearted,
but I hope I can have fun moments.
I believe that part of my life mission is to
be a space holder for sorrow,
a kind of wise, intuitive oracle for that sorrow;
But I also hope I can balance that with good humor,
belly laughs and
truly enjoying the company of other people.
Do I know what, how or when the next phase will occur?
Soooo...nooo.
But I must believe and hope that it will come.;
that I will be able to build on this healing and soul strengthening time.
I am sooo into this moment
this phase of the journey.
I am slow,
quiet,
free,
introspective,
allowing myself to be “just as I am”
I allow for what I know I need right now
and am so so very grateful that I have this gift of time
of isolation
of learning
that is just for me.
The lack of stress,
of responsibility,
of expectation
is so what I need.
But it is not only the external expectations that have been removed;
I am removing the more weighty,
impactful,
self-imposed expectations from myself.
Giving myself permission to not BE anything…
“No need to hurry.
No need to sparkle.
No need to be anything but oneself.” -Virginia Wolf.
And this is healing me;
building me,
strengthening me.
So many people
are striving to find this peace that I am learning.
So many people
reading the books,
buying the products,
dating the people,
chasing the dream,
all to find that sense of peace and
purpose and
enjoyment of this gift of life.
And it is truly such a different path for each individual soul.
I am finding my path,
my truth,
my purpose,
what sparks my soul.
And I do it all while bearing the weight of grief and sorrow.
I will miss my Kenny until I take my last breath.
I will also treasure the gift I was given to be his mom and
know that he was loved unconditionally.
Why he died;
how he died,
what role God played;
who God really is….
these questions will remain unanswered for the time.
I may always come back to the questions in one form or another,
but they are there as curiosities;
they do not constrain the course of my days.
And so I walk these days,
I find rest for my oh so weary being,
for I AM a human BEING.
That is all for now,
just being…..,
allowing what is,
being so okay with how I am wired and
knowing what I need.
Being love and grace to myself,
being with love in all things as they are,
breathing love and
being right in the center of Love’s Will.
|
Regrets...I've had a few…a few?
Really?...only a few?
I am a four on the Enneagram…
an INFJ on the Myers Briggs…
usually all I can see are my regrets.
And yet, paradoxically,
when I look at the old home movies I had digitized online at Costco,
I happy cry at the nostalgia of my then young children, now grown,
and how they had such a happy childhood-
how we did it “right.”
Conversely, I may just as easily awake at 2:59 am in a cold sweat
my mind starts racing
how I have completely and utterly ruined my children’s lives
by immature and unwise decisions raising them,
and how I got married too young -
yada, yada, yada...Spin, spin spin my thoughts.
You may relate, and know how these thoughts are generally unfounded
and when we awake from a night of head spinning,
we realize in the light of morning that
all really is WELL with the world.
The baby is sleeping peacefully in the crib,
the teenager returns at curfew
and the adult child is happily married, employed and visits for Christmas.
And in my own case this is true….
with one major exception….
one of my four grown children is NOT ok.
He is not coming home for Christmas this year
or any year in the future
because he is dead…
died of mental illness at the age of 21 in early 2012.
Yeah, I have a few regrets.
A few wrestlings with hindsight over the past almost seven years.
The night we learned of his death,
in complete shock…
all I could mutter was
“this doesn't happen in families like ours”
I was an elementary Montessori teacher
instructing love and peace...along with fractions.
Married 27 years, albeit with the usual marital challenges of two people
who married young and had to figure out how to grow up together.
Faith filled, my son was,
the always smiling heart of the family,
the easy child,
the peacemaker
with no major childhood issues or trauma.
But he was also an adventure seeker,
always thinking outside the box -
so much so that we did not see it-
the irrational thinking,
the impulsive behavior,
the bouts of depression mingled with
short lived episodes of manic impulsivity,
magical thinking.
I had just left teaching to begin coursework towards
a doctorate in clinical psychology
to help children who have experienced trauma,
but I hadn't taken the class yet on abnormal psychology.
I did not yet know that bipolar
most often appears at about the age of 19
and commonly goes undetected or misdiagnosed.
I did not yet know that bipolar disorder is
considered the cancer of mental illness,
that 20 percent of people with bipolar disorder die by suicide.
I did not know anyone who had a child die by suicide…
I thought it only happened to spoiled, neglected movie stars’ kids,
kids from messed up homes
Kids who were not given the love and resiliency skill set
that my own children were given.
I did not yet know that suicide as an organic mental illness
is a neurological disorder.
I did not yet know that the experience of having a child die by suicide
is considered by the American Psychological Association to be
the equivalent of having survived the holocaust.
Yea, regrets...I have a few.
And in hindsight,
I can see how my beautiful loving son was struggling.
How he may have been helped with therapy or meds
….or not.
I will never know.
I will never know
if he had lived,
if he would have been so ill
and in so much pain
that his living would have been miserable-
not just for him,
but for us those who loved him
to watch him struggle with a broken brain which betrayed him.
I will never know
if he might have responded
to some of the ever-growing successful treatments
and lived a full enriching life.
I now know of other families like mine.
Families whose young adult children
were raised in loving intact families
and also died of mental illness.
Children who did receive therapy and medications,
but still died.
Parents of those who did receive help,
but still wondered
if there was something more they could have done.
We know these children.
We know their death was not a rational choice-
these were intelligent,
gifted,
sensitive,
strong children
who stole our hearts.
Yet, they got sick-
ugly sick,
not noble sick,
like with leukemia which attacks the bloodstream,
but with a brain which developed abnormally
and caused their perceptions of the world and themselves to be distorted.
And if only, there was a “cure”-
if only every time a young person got mentally sick,
we could see it,
put them in a machine to know where the brain was broken
and then write a prescription to fix it-
then maybe no one would ever die by suicide again.
But maybe not.
Hindsight offers no guarantees in this case.
The “if onlys” and “woulda, shoulda, couldas”
will drown you and
take your life from you.
Hindsight is best covered in grace-
lots and lots and lots of grace.
Grace to accept that
if they were meant to still be with us, then they would be.
Grace to know that we did everything
to love them while they were here.
Grace to know they loved us
and they knew they were loved.
Grace to know
we cannot control our world.
Grace to know
if bad things can happen in this world,
then good things can happen too.
Looking back on those days of desperate survival -
on just how to make it through the day,
let alone the days weeks years to follow,
It seemed unbearable
that I would have to live with this
forever.
It wasn't going to go away.
In fact, the fallout in our family for the next several years
made survival even harder.
The one piece of hope I clung to
which pulled me through
was, and continues to be,
my quest to make meaning out of tragedy.
To create a healing space
for other families devastated by child loss
to retreat from the world around
which goes on so seamlessly,
so callous to our internal explosion of pain.
Giving comfort to others-
one of the grace gifts of hindsight,
redeeming the regret of
my son’s otherwise meaningless death.
Hindsight provides all these graces.
But perhaps the greatest grace…
the greatest gift hindsight provides is
the grace
to live every moment to the fullest,
to appreciate those in your lives,
to know the brevity of our days
and to not make undone dishes a giant argument.
Hindsight says,
remember to say I love you
every time you say goodbye,
because after you have looked back over
the good, the bad and ugly of life,
love really is all that remains.
My son composed a book two years before his death.
In it he penned these words which reveal
the greatest lesson hindsight has brought me……
“Let them know they are loved.”
|
But what if this season brings an acute reminder of what you don’t have? Of what you had, but lost? Or of what you always wanted, but never had? What if it only heightens your already cynical nature, creating an even greater disparity between the haves and have nots?
On a regular basis, amid the practicalities of daily life- one is able to submerge those bitter feelings of what one feels they are missing. Perhaps you are single longing for a mate. Perhaps you are in a relationship, wishing your lover would make a permanent commitment. Perhaps you are married and longing for a child, but after years of trying you have lost all hope. Perhaps you are trapped in a loveless relationship and every happy couple reminds you of what you acutely long for. Perhaps you had all the happiness of a loving family and it was taken from you in one moment by a drunk driver or fatal illness. Whatever your situation, the commercials on TV, the talk of friends about their upcoming happy festivities all heighten that otherwise dulled sensation of all that you do not possess.
In all this you feel so very alone, so alone you are contemplating removing yourself from this planet. Your conscious and unconscious rage at a creator and father who has seemingly abandoned you, surfaces to your emotions and you want to lash out at yourself, others and God.
I know of another story from this season of the year which is rarely discussed because no one wants to remember the reality of the beautiful coming of the Christ child. But the reality is that with one life came much much death. Perhaps you need to be reminded that with the joy of Christ’s birth there came much sorrow.
You see there was another mother in Bethlehem named Mary. You never heard of her? That is because she was not a holy virgin. She was merely a young first time mother who grew up in Bethlehem, married a nice Jewish boy, who happened to be a carpenter, and at the ripe age of 20 years old became a first time mother of a darling curly headed boy named Joshua.
Joshua was the joy of her life. She loved her husband, Zachary, yes, but Joshua she adored. He came into the world with little resistance. The midwife said she had never had such an easy first time delivery. Joshua was so mild mannered, crying only when he required his mother’s milk or when he was overly tired. Mary was a dutiful and attendant mother and carried Joshua with her all places- to market, to bring Zachary his lunch when he was at work, to visit her mother and sisters. Joshua grew and flourished without any separation from his beloved Mother Mary.
But that all changed in one day, in one moment with no warning, no special dream to tell her to escape. In the middle of the day, a few hours before sunset of the Sabbath, Mary was preparing her Shabbott table. She had just laid Joshua to nap as they had had a long day down at the river doing the weekly wash. Joshua was sleeping and Mary stepped outside to shake out the Sabbath table cloth. Suddenly she heard shrieks of women in the distance, the likes of which sent shivers down her back. All her neighbors flew out of their houses and into the street when they too heard the terrifying peals. They were wondering what could have happened to cause such screaming, moaning and crying when the sound of horses’ hooves and running reached their ears.
As their hearts raced, but before they had a chance to breathe another breath, the soldiers were upon them. They began at the other end of the street, entering homes with no warning or permission. What could these filthy Roman centurions be up to now? First they tax them to poverty and now they are ransacking their homes. It took only moments for those gathered in the streets to realize they were more than ransacking their homes. They were killing. Not killing just anyone, but methodically murdering any boys two years of age and under.
Mary was still trying to process all the commotion; it was all so fast, so surreal that she did not have time to react quickly enough. The soldiers were upon them, upon her as the burly man pushed her aside and stormed inside her home. Within seconds there was the petrified cry of a baby, her baby Joshua. Instinctively she ran inside to Joshua and grabbed him from the soldier screaming, cursing him. But his strength overpowered even the strength of a protective mother as the soldier grabbed Joshua from her arms and ended the cries of the toddler with one slash of his Roman sword. Blood, her baby’s blood, flowed from his chest and he breathed no more. The soldier moved on, his task accomplished, leaving Mary holding her lifeless child. Blood curdling screams rose in her throat, but no sound came as the anguish of what had just occurred stifled her voice, her emotions. She could not breathe. Then it came, the gut wrenching “sound of Rachel weeping for her children because they were no more.”
That day there were no miraculous angels singing, “Be not afraid,” no tidings of great joy, no king’s treasures. There was only sorrow, unending sorrow, a holocaust of the worst kind. No holy night, no special stars – only blackness, utter complete and total blackness. Where was God? Were these not his chosen precious little ones? How could he allow such atrocities to his people? He is God. Could he not have stopped such evil? That day when Joshua died, so did Mary’s faith. It was replaced with such bitterness and anger, at the Romans, yes, but more so at God. She never prayed again or celebrated the Sabbath. And her rage was doubled when she learned, after years of trying to conceive another child, that she would be barren the rest of her life. God had allowed her one and only son to be murdered in front of her eyes. For that she could never forgive Him.
Then, to complete her bitter rage, she later learned that there was a young baby boy whom God had spared that day by sending an angel to warn the parents to leave Bethlehem in the middle of the night. That baby boy God spared, and there were rumors that he might be the messiah. But she would never believe in a God or any messiah who would allow her son to die, so that he might live.
|
As I was walking my dog this morning among the tall pines along the creek that flows near our house, I was startled by an elderly gentleman who was hidden below in the trees, picking up trash along the stream banks on his property.
"Hello," his deep voice resonated. I jumped slightly and turned to see him and his dog.
"Sorry, looks like I frightened you."
"Yes, you did. I didn't see you there. Hello. How are you?"
"I am richly blessed."
Richly blessed?! Those were the first words out of his mouth-the first thought to come to his mind and response to speak aloud. As I walked on, I reflected more deeply about the significance of this first immediate response from an older person-most experienced in life. I thought , yes, yes you are blessed, you have two working legs, two seeing eyes, two ears that hear, two arms to pick things up and obviously a well functioning brain and you live in a gorgeous place. As people age these basics of living, become more and more significant.
Then I thought, do I apply these same criteria for myself to feel richly blessed? Yes. Even though I have a son who suffered mental illness and took his life. I miss him to the point of physical pain, but am I not too "richly blessed"? All the criteria I applied to the gentleman, do I not also have? In addition, I have three amazing, healthy intelligent and gifted children still on this earth. I have a husband who loves me. I have a loving caring mother who is still present on this planet. Today is mother's day- a day for any mother who has had a child die to be tempted to sink into self-pity, grief and sadness. But thanks to an angelic stranger on my walk today- I can appreciate that on this day to honor motherhood, I am RICHLY BLESSED.
|
Now my job is to help- is to be there- is to stand and raise my voice with the others and to hear the cries of a faith person who has lost a loved one to suicide due to mental illness. I will be your Horton. I will hear your tiny "Who" voice. You are somebody and you are not alone. You are heard, even in small numbers and I will be there with you because, just like me, you know, that this could happen to anyone.
|
|
Alternative Education
Would you like to spend the night alone in the woods in a tent in a cold foreign country? Would you consider this “education?” For a young man, just turned eighteen, this is his education - his “college,” if you will. His declared major is independence with a minor in adventure.
Kenny Rutz walked away from his childhood home in Northern California on a journey by foot to reach Mt. Baker Washington where he hoped to find a job and snowboard the mountain. He left with forty- five pounds of backpacking gear and a guitar on his back. His great adventure took him to the local bus stop where he managed to navigate, not the back roads as he had planned, but rather the Sacramento Valley transit system which led him on an eighteen-hour bus ride to his brother’s house in Bellevue, Washington.
He stayed with his brother for several days, but was restless and bored as he waited at home while his brother attended his video game programming classes at a private conventional college. They had a great night out celebrating Thanksgiving dinner at a five star restaurant (on their mother’s credit card), then Kenny was gone the next morning leaving a simple note, “Josh, I left. Peace.” This boy was born about four decades too late.
Kenny now began his dream adventure as he hitchhiked his way to Mt. Baker. His spirits lifted on the open road only to find no snow and no jobs at Mt. Baker. It would be a minimum of two weeks before the resort might open. Undaunted he devised a new plan and found someone who would take him to the idealic destination of the North American snowboarding capital – Mt. Whistler Canada.
Kenny is now sleeping in his tent out in the woods. It is colder than he imagined and he is still seeking employment to get a work Visa (yes he did remember to bring his passport). However, the lack of snow has kept the tourist industry in a slump and so far, no jobs are to be found. For Kenny, this is all just part of the adventure.
Where this adventure takes him is uncertain. Who knows - he might change his “major” several times, as most college students do, before he finds the right fit. Like most college students, his future is an open book or, in Kenny’s case, an open road.
|
2013 Recipient Rachel Young
2012 Recipient Emma Cook
|
Monies raised will go to the following organizations:
|
Please join us in a celebration of my brother, Kenny's life. Reception to follow at the church. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Kenny Rutz Endless Joy Memorial Foundation. It will be at Green Valley Community Church on Friday, January 20, 2012 from 3:30 P.M. to 6:30 P.M. Thank you.