Death Cafe profile for Kailin Zeigen Cobos


Location: United States

http://kjzeigen.blogspot.com/

About Kailin Zeigen Cobos:

One of the ways in which I cope with loss is to pour every ounce of my heart and soul into writing.  It is my fervent belief that the written word can create & foster bonds amongst total strangers.  Words intertwine kindred spirits from near and far.  Words possess the power to unearth understanding in places where none existed prior.  Words allow me to convey how grief is an honest reflection of the genuine, unconditional love I feel for my parents.

 

Loss-- be it a sudden, unexpected one OR one which occurs over the course of an undefined, unknown period of time-- is loss.  As a community of people who inhabit the same spaces & places, it is our responsibility to embrace, respect, console, reflect, listen compassionately or offer unselfishly room to those in desperate need of a refuge in which to grieve freely... and above all else we, as human beings, must strive to realize that loss (of any kind) is in fact a life event which irrevocably changes the course of those left behind.  There's absolutely no time limit on feeling the effects of loss... there's no deadline upon which grief must end-- because grief is the hand which holds your own with purposeful intention, always... grief is as ever changing in level and intensity as the ocean.... the tide rises and lowers, quiets & screams.  Grief offers insight and strength... grief is a teacher as longs as our ears, heart, mind and spirit remain open.  It is ill fitting to place judgments anywhere, on anyone, or at anytime particularly if one has not walked through life in another person's shoes... or even considered walking beside them


What brings you to Death Cafe?

My mom was killed by a hit and run drunk driver when I was five years old.  From the moment I learned of her death I literally became my dad's 'little shadow' always.  He was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis several years before the sudden and tragic loss of my mom.  Around the age of ten I came face to face with my dad's MS while we were on a trip together in Cannon Beach, Oregon. He began to experience a severe relapse moments after we arrived at our hotel and subsequently had to be rushed to the hospital.  I felt complete and utter terror in every single part of my mind, body, heart and soul.  I was convicned he would die and I would be alone in the world.  Once he was in recovery, my dad reassured me that his particular type of MS was similar to a staircase.  Some days he would fall down, then he would rebound...  On August 26th, 2012, my dad died unexpectedly and suddenly at the age of sixty-three from complications related to his MS.  This loss has shattered me in every possible way... I lived and breathed his care & well-being.  My primary focus since forever has been to help out in every possible way... to keep my him safe, happy, healthy, comfortable, as independent as possible... to help him thrive & survive always.  We were best friends.  He was a bright shining light in my universe.  Far and away the most positive, inspiring, wise, caring, open, loving, silly, cool, outrageously courageous person in the whole wide world.  We shared an unshakable bond.  At the age of thirty-one I abruptly found myself parentless, shocked, heartbroken, lost, lonely, confused, angry, devastated and not sure how to breathe or move.  Without my dad here to serve as protector of my mom's memory, it falls upon my shoulders to persevere and carry them both lovingly inside my heart for all time.  I quit my job almost a year after my dad died.  I have been searching for what happens next ever since while also battling with insecurity, timidness, severe sleeplessness which has haunted me since my mom died, as well as some depression....  I am searching for myself & climbing my way back as best as I know how...


What would you like your legacy to be?

My mom and dad never had the chance to live into their elder years.  Linda Zeigen will forever be stunning and full of compassion at thirty-eight and Dave shall always remain humble and charming at the age of sixty-three.  If I’m lucky, and with their help, I will make it to the ‘golden years’.  When I do, I hope to look back on everything and find comfort in knowing that I tried to be the best possible version of them both.  But I do worry, I worry that I am letting them both down on days when I can scarcely stop myself from crying for more than ten minutes at a time… I worry that they still don’t know how deeply I love and appreciate them for getting me as far as they did.  I worry about finding a job… or rather, I worry that it’ll be more challenging than I realize to encourage an employer to take a chance on me.   But--Someday something will change.  My wish and desire is to write... to connect with others who have experienced loss, to be of service to others... to offer help and camaraderie, to play a part in destigmatizing what it means to embrace the presence of grief in our daily lives ... I want to live fully, happily, honestly, openly, with courage, conviction and willingness to explore.  I would love to find a job, unearth passions & a place in the world...  my identity as daughter and caregiver have unwillingly fallen away with the death of my dad.  I would love to find & recover myself amongst the ruins of loss...
 
Death and/or loss, in my opinion, is the one universal human experience.  Not all of us find religion, get married, or have a family but we all experience loss… Since the tender age of five I have felt a certain degree of loneliness in my familiarity with death.  A keen awareness of my own mortality provokes a paralyzing fear to haunt me day in and day out.  I long for a softening of this terror.

Thoughts for sharing:

When Death Visits by John O'Donohue from Anam Cara

 Death is a lonely visitor.  After it visits  your home, nothing is ever the same again.  There is an empty place at the table; there is an absence in the house.  Having someone close to you die is an incredibly strange and desolate experience.  Something breaks within you then that will never come together again.  Gone is the person whom you loved, whose face and hands and body you knew so well.  This body, for the first time, is completely empty.  This is very frightening and strange.  After the death many questions come into your mind concerning where the person has gone, what they see and feel now.  The death of a loved one is bitterly lonely.  When you really love someone, you would be willing to die in their place.  Yet no one can take another's place when that time comes.  Each one of us has to go it alone.  It is so strange that when someone dies, they literally disappear.  Human experience includes all kinds of continuity and discontinuity, closeness and distance.  In death, experience reaches the ultimate frontier.  The deceased literally falls out of the visible world of form and presence.  At birth you appear out of nowhere, at death you disappear  to nowhere.  If you have a row with someone you love and she goes away, and if you then desperately need to meet again, regardless of distance, you can travel to where she is to find her.  The terrible moment of loneliness in grief comes when you realize that you will never see the deceased again.  The absence of their life, the absence of their voice, face, and presence become something that, as Sylvia Plath says, begins to grow beside you like a tree.

 

New post on A Poem A Day courtesy of dhoopkinaray:

She Let Go~ By Safire Rose

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgments.

She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.

She let go of the committee of indecision within her.

She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.

Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice.

She didn’t read a book on how to let go.

She didn’t search the scriptures.

She just let go.

She let go of all of the memories that held her back.

She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.

She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go.

She didn’t journal about it.

She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer.

She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.

She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope.

She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go.

She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.

She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment.

She didn’t call the prayer line.

She didn’t utter one word.

She just let go.

No one was around when it happened.

There was no applause or congratulations.

No one thanked her or praised her.

No one noticed a thing.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort.

There was no struggle.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.

It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be.

A small smile came over her face.

A light breeze blew through her.

And the sun and the moon shone forevermore…

 

Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere:

“grief is a house

where the chairs

have forgotten how to hold us

the mirrors how to reflect us

the walls how to contain us

 

grief is a house that disappears

each time someone knocks at the door

or rings the bell

a house that blows into the air

at the slightest gust

that buries itself deep in the ground

while everyone is sleeping

 

grief is a house where no one can protect you

where the younger sister

will grow older than the older one

where the doors

no longer let you in

or out” 

 

 One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
 
 
~This poem held (holds) a particular place of significance in the heart of both my dad as well as myself... it is the poem I read aloud at his service almost two years ago...

Dave Zeigen 3/12/49-8/26/12

Linda Zeigen 2/9/48-11/22/86


Contact Kailin Zeigen Cobos



Kailin Zeigen Cobos's posts on the Death Cafe website


New Blog post: Two Years Later, Slow & Steady

Posted by Kailin Zeigen Cobos on Aug. 27, 2014, 8:53 a.m. 2 comments


I just called to say I love you

 

I just called to say how much I care, I do

 

I just called to say I love you

 

And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

 ---lyrics written by Stevie Wonder

 

 

One of my dad’s most sacred and favorite memories to share aloud was how he used to call my mom from work and serenade her with the song “I Just Called to ...





Contact Kailin Zeigen Cobos

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