What’s changed and what is still the same ten years down the road of child loss?
I’ve thought about this a lot in the past few months as I prepared for, greeted and marked another year of unwelcome milestones since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.
Some things are exactly the same:
Whenever I focus solely on his absence, my heart still cries, “Can he REALLYbe gone?” I am STILL A Mess Some Days….
The pain is precisely as painful as the moment I got the news.
It’s just as horrific today to dwell on the manner of his leaving.
I miss him, I miss him, I miss him. I live every day with his Tangible Absence.
I am thankful for his life, for the opportunity to be his mama and for the part of me shaped by who he was.
The absolute weight of grief has not changed. The burden remains a heavy one.
Daily choices are the difference between giving up and going on. I have to make Wise Choices in Grief.
My faith in Christ and my confidence that His promises are sure is the strength on which I rely. I have been Knocked Down But Not Destroyed.
I passionately look forward to the culmination of all history when every sad thing will come untrue.
Some things are very different:
Dominic’s absence is no longer all I see.
Sorrow and pain are no longer all I feel.
I’ve learned to live in spite of the hole in my heart-his unique place isn’t threatened by allowing myself to love others and pouring my life into the people I have left.
Joy and sorrow are not mutually exclusive. They live together in my heart and I can smile and laugh again while still pining for a time when things were different and easier.
I am Stronger because I’ve carried this burden for years. I’ve learned to shift it from side to side.
The darkness has receded so that I see light once more. I’m not as prone to fall as fast down the dark hole of despair.
My heart longs for reunion but has also learned to treasure the time I have left here on earth.
I’ve never hidden the struggle and pain of this journey.
But I don’t want those who are fresh in grief to think that how they are feeling TODAY is the way they will feel FOREVER.
By doing the work grief requires, making wise choices and holding onto hope a heart does begin to heal.
I am not as fragile today as I was on the first day.
Gratitude is important. It is (in my opinion) a necessary ingredient for a healthy and hope-filled and useful life. It is the key to any real happiness a heart might find on this broken road.
But it cannot fill up the empty place where Dominic used to be.
I wrote this post December, 2015. It hadn’t been long since I joined an online community of bereaved parents and began to see that I wasn’t the only one who had friends and family that misunderstood child loss.
I was spending a lot of time in my life trying to help others comprehend, just a little, what it felt like to bury a child.
Trying to give them a tiny taste of how this pain is so, so different than any other I had experienced. Begging them to toss the popular ideas bandied around that grief followed “stages” and was “predictable”.
I re-share every so often because it seems to help, a little.
I’m re-sharing today in honor of Bereaved Parents Month.
People say, “I can’t imagine.“
But then they do.
They think that missing a dead child is like missing your kid at college or on the mission field but harder and longer.
That’s not it at all.
It isn’t nostalgia for a time when things were different or better or you talked more: it’s a gut-wrenching, breath-robbing, knee-buckling, aching groan that lives inside you begging to be released.
There is no smooth transition up the ladder of grief recovery so that you emerge at the top, better for the experience and able to put it behind you.
We’ve all heard the much touted theory that grief proceeds in the following stages:
denial
anger
bargaining
depression
acceptance
And people (who haven’t experienced grief) tend to think it’s a straight line from one stage to another, gradually going from bottom to top and then on with life.
But it just isn’t true.
Reality is, these “stages” coexist and fluctuate back and forth from day to day and even hour to hour.
Grief remakes you from the inside out.
Losing a child has made me rethink everything I believe and everything I am. It has changed and is changing my relationship with myself and with others in ways I couldn’t imagine and often don’t anticipate.
And it is hard, hard work.
Life around us doesn’t stop. Grieving parents return to work, continue to nurture their surviving children, keep getting up in the morning and taking care of daily details.
We are doing all the things others do, but we are doing them with an added weight of sorrow and pain that makes each step feel like wading through quicksand.
We want you to know we are doing the best we can.
Life without my child is like having a leg amputated–I am forced to learn to manage without it, but everything will always be harder and different.
And it will be this way for the rest of my life.
The one thing a grieving parent DOESN’T want you to know is how it feels to bury your child.
I don’t want anyone else to know what it means to leave part of your heart and a chunk of your life beneath the ground.
“But please: Don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as a comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.”
It happens in all kinds of ways. One friend just slowly backs off from liking posts on Facebook, waves at a distance from across the sanctuary, stops texting to check up on me.
Another observes complete radio silence as soon as she walks away from the graveside.
Still another hangs in for a few weeks-calls, texts, even invites me to lunch until I can see in her eyes that my lack of “progress” is making her uneasy. Then she, too, falls off the grid.
Why do people do that?
Why is it, when we need them most, many friends-and I mean really, truly FRIENDS–just can’t hang in and hold on?
I admit in the early days I didn’t care WHY they did it.
It broke my heart and enraged me all at the same time. I felt abandoned, judged, forgotten, pressured to conform to some unwritten standard of how I was “supposed” to do grief and utterly, completely forsaken.
It took me months to begin to even consider their perspective and years to come to a place where I could forgive them.
Here’s what I’ve figured out this side of devastating, overwhelming, heart-shattering pain about why some friends run away:
I represent their greatest fear. I am a billboard for loss. My life screams, “We are NOT in control!” And that is scary. Most folks run away from scary if they can.
I remind them that faith is a living thing, tender and vulnerable to trials and testing. We love to tout Sunday School answers that follow like the tag lines on Aesop’s fables when asked about anything to do with Jesus or how God works in the world. But it’s just not that simple. The Bible is full (FULL!) of untidy stories where even the giants of faith got it wrong for a season. I think people are afraid that if they follow me down the rabbit hole of questions they might never come back out. Better to stand outside and hope I emerge safe and sound without risking themselves.
My situation is messy and they don’t want to get involved. I will need ongoing, intense investments of emotional energy and time. Who knows where it might lead? Who knows how many hours might have to be given to come alongside and support someone whose journey looks more like slogging through a swamp than a walk in the park? These folks are just not going to risk entanglement.
Some friends and family are genuinely afraid of doing harm. They feel my pain so deeply that they are frozen, unable to do or say anything because they fear they will make things worse. These are the hearts most easy to forgive and the ones most likely to jump back in when I assure them they cannot make it worse but their support can make it better.
Some people were going to disappear anyway. We don’t like to admit it but many friendships are only for a season-we go to the same church, live in the same neighborhood, our kids go to the same school-and as soon as circumstances change these people fade away. Well, circumstances certainly changed! They leave because our differences outweigh our similarities and it requires too much effort to maintain the friendship.
Understanding why people run away has helped my heart.
It doesn’t undo the pain inflicted by abandonment of those I felt sure would stay close by my side, but it puts it in perspective.
Truth is, I’m not sure how many people I would have stalwartly supported for the long haul either before Dominic ran ahead to heaven.
None of us possess infinite emotional, mental, physical and relational resources. It’s only natural that we portion them out according to our own priorities-even when that means abandoning friends who really need us.
Rehearsing offense only ties me in knots.
It changes nothing.
I have limits as well.
Forgiving those that chose to walk away frees me to use my resources in more fruitful ways that help me heal.
A tender broken heart can make all kinds of excuses for less-than-gracious behavior or words.
I know that often we grievers bear the brunt of others’ well-meaning but misplaced and sometimes downright painful advice, remarks, looks and gossip and that makes it easy to rationalize returning like for like.
But I’m not responsible for THEM, I’m responsible for ME.
❤ Melanie
Oh, how I need to learn to practice the pause!
I’m getting better, but still react when I should reflect.
I need to do thisEVERYtime.
Lord,
Help my stubborn heart slow down and give me grace to yield and allow You to melt it, mold it and make it more like Your own!
It would be lovely if life were neatly divided into seasons or sections.
But like so many things, there are no clean lines between now and what used to be.
Who I am today is shaped by who I was the day before.
I think that’s one of the things I enjoy most about fiction-authors are free to wander back and forth among character’s thoughts, past experiences and present reality.
It makes for a more complete story.
Each year about this time (in the waning days of my Season of Sorrow) I usually stop and take stock of how far I’ve come and how grief continues to shape my life.
There are many, many ways I’ve healed and am healing:
I no longer cry every day.
I feel true joy!
The pain of losing Dominic doesn’t dominate me although it plays like Background Music-not always demanding my attention.
I celebrate my family and my family’s milestones with genuine excitement and once again enjoy planning get togethers, birthdays and (most!) holidays.
I function at a higher level and am able to rejoin some groups and participate in some activities I just couldn’t manage in the early years.
I’ve made peace with the questions that won’t be answered this side of eternity.
I’ve incorporated traumatic loss into my understanding of Who God is and how He may work in world while accepting I don’t always like it.
I attend baby showers, weddings and even funerals without bringing all my lost dreams or personal sadness to the event.
I laugh-a lot. It feels good again to belly laugh at family memories or new jokes.
I can extend hospitality once more. That was a core component of my pre-loss life and personality and I missed it.
But there are many ways in which grief and loss continues to inform how I walk in the world:
I absolutely, positively cannot multitask! I have to break daily chores into single actions so I can focus and accomplish one thing at a time. I used to be able to cook, talk on the phone, bend over and motion to a child needing help with school all at once. Not anymore! Just recently I lost an important piece of mail most likely because I was looking at it while chatting to a family member. I put it down and cannot for the life of me remember where it is.
I become anxious when around too many people-especially if they are people I don’t know or the venue is one with which I’m unfamiliar. This even happens in the car driving in new places. I was never an anxious person before. In fact, I was typically the voice of calm in a group of friends panicking over some small detail that went awry. I try not to share my anxiety, but it’s there and it takes a huge amount of energy to corral it and keep it from escaping into wild demonstrations like running from a room. (I do a lot of counting/visualizing/breathing and self-soothing.)
I don’t like noise. To be fair, I never really did but now it’s exacerbated. Shopping can be a real trial when stores insist on blasting music in hopes it makes patrons feel like spending more money. I, for one, just want to get what’s on my list and get the heck out of Dodge! I love children but I can’t tolerate the incessant chatter little ones bring to a Sunday School classroom or a Vacation Bible School craft table. I used to be the first one to volunteer for those posts but I just. can’t. do. it. anymore.
I crave predictability. I know, I know, of all people I should understand control is an illusion. I do. But the tiny details of life-like planning meals, choosing clothes, cleaning routines and evening quiet times- are things I want to be able to count on. Routine is my friend. It helps my mind (such as it is) operate on reliable pathways. I’ve never been a big fan of random, but now it’s something I try to avoid at all costs.
I need solitude. I’m still processing some things. I imagine I’ll be doing that the rest of my life as different experiences from NOW interact with my loss. I cannot do that in the presence of others. I need to think, reflect, write, read and walk it out. That means I have to devote time and space to being alone. If circumstances prevent me from quiet solitude for too long my blood pressure climbs, my patience disappears and little things grow large.
I don’t sweat the small stuff (usually-see above!). If time, effort or money can remedy it then it’s just. not. a. problem. I’ve learned the hard way that life and love are the most important things in life. Everything else might be nice but it’s not essential. I’m not minimizing the stress and strain of broken pipes, wrecked cars or lost jobs. It’s just that eventually those are situations that can be fixed. And lest you think I’ve not experienced any of those, I have. My first thought whenever anything happens I once perceived as “the worst thing that could happen” is, “It’s absolutely, positively NOT the worst thing that can happen”.
I need to observe a careful rhythm of commitment and freedom on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. I always kept my big calendars each year and tossed them into a box of “if I ever need to know these things”. When I look back on how busy we were as a young family I’m astounded at the pace we kept, the places we went, the hours I was frantically working to fulfill all our obligations along with the things we just wanted to do. I’m sure some of this is a function of age-I’m no spring chicken any more-but I know in my bones it’s also a function of the ongoing toll grief takes on my body, mind and soul. I can only manage a few days of busyness in a row until I need a complete shut-down for at least twenty-four hours or more. I refuse to schedule any but the most difficult to get appointments in a week where I’ve already inked in other commitments.
Sleep, regular exercise and good food are necessary for me to face life with a good attitude. This is probably true of most folks but just a day or two of fast food, no outdoor walks or interrupted nights and I’m toast. I’m not a whole foods, organic everything kind of gal but I try to eat a variety of fresh and less-processed meals. When I’m home I have an almost two mile path through woods and up gentle inclines that builds muscle, exercises my lungs and body and gives me ample time to drink in the beauty of birds, wildflowers and leafy trees. If you’ve ever been to my home you know that the rest of the crowd can stay up as long as they want to but I’m headed upstairs between eight and nine. Of course I get up before the sun, so my total hours are roughly the same but there’s something about that pre-midnight sleep that restores me like no other.
I could probably list dozens more, less obvious, ways grief still shapes the me of today. But it no longer binds me like it did in the early days. I’m better able to work around the difficult bits and still make a meaningful life with the people I love.
I was utterly amazed at the questions people plied me with not long after Dominic’s accident.
They ranged from digging for details about what happened (when we ourselves were still unsure) to ridiculous requests for when I’d be returning to my previous responsibilities in a local ministry.
Since then, many of my bereaved parent friends have shared even more questions that have been lobbed at them across tables, across rooms and in the grocery store.
Recently there was a post in our group that generated so many excellent answers to these kinds of questions, I asked permission to reprint them here (without names, of course!).
So here they are, good answers to hard (or inappropriate or just plain ridiculous) questions:
When asked to do something the week or month or even year after your child left:
No. (It’s a complete sentence. You do not have to give an explanation.)
Thank you for asking me. I won’t be able to participate this time.
I’m so sorry. This is a hard time of year for me and I just can’t do it.
Since my son’s accident, I don’t do well at holidays (or summer, or birthday month). I can’t take on any extra responsibilities right now.
I’m sorry, we will be out of town. (If you really WILL be out of town.)
When asked about the details of your child’s death:
Why do you ask? (Stops them nearly every time.)
That’s an uncomfortable question that I’d rather not answer.
Does it matter?
We choose not to talk about his/her death and prefer to talk about his/her life. Would you like to know something about him/her?
I prefer not to relive that trauma, thank you.
When asked, “How are you?”:
About as well as you would imagine given the circumstances.
Managing to do what must be done but very sad my son (or daughter) is no longer here with me.
Trying hard to put the pieces back together. It’s a struggle every day.
Our family is loving one another through the hardest thing we’ve ever experienced.
How are YOU? (Most won’t even notice you didn’t answer and will launch into their own discourse.)
When asked if you think you’re “back to normal” or “over it”:
No. (It’s a complete sentence, see above.)
I’ll never be over my child. I’m not over any of my children. How could I be?
My life has been shattered. I can’t even find all the pieces much less assemble them into whatever normal used to be.
I don’t remember what “normal” is.
It’s a daily adjustment that I will be making for the rest of my life.
When asked anything at all that seems insensitive, inappropriate or just downright nosey:
I’m so sorry, I need to go. Bye!
I can’t talk about that now.
Say nothing. Absolutely nothing. Until they change the subject for you.
How are you? Your children? (Or any other question back at them-ignoring theirs)
I am obligated (by my profession of faith) to be as kind and polite as I can be but I am not obligated to answer every question someone asks.
I’ve found that having some of these pat answers in my pocket helps. Many of them are good for just about any question that may come my way.
I try to deflect, demur or redirect.
But when that fails I’m just as likely to tell the truth, which is often not at all what the person really wants to hear.
And then they are left scrambling for a way out of a conversation I never wanted to have in the first place.
I first shared this some years ago as I was beginning to work through the theological implications of a God who did not intervene to save my son.
I thought I understood who God was and how He worked in the world because nothing that had happened to me challenged those assumptions. Things were neat and tidy with clear edges that demarcated “those who love God” and “those who refuse Him”.
But God is not confined to a box I or any other human can construct. He is GOD.
That’s a hard, hard truth to digest but it is truth.
❤ Melanie
It’s possible that you haven’t thought of it this way, but if you are a believer in Christ and have yet to walk through faith-shattering trials, you may have placed God in a box.
I know I had.
I thought that after decades of walking with Jesus, reading and studying Scripture and wading through some fairly significant trials I had God pretty well figured out.
I could quote verses for every occasion, open my Bible to any book without looking in the Table of Contents, and had something sprirtual to say about everything.
But now, like Job, I cover my mouth.
C.S. Lewis shared his grief journey after losing his wife in the book, A Grief Observed.
What many may not know is that he was pressured to publish it under a pseudonym.
His publishers and some of his close friends didn’t want people to know that this giant of the Christian faith, this celebrated apologist for believing Christ was shaken to the core by the death of his beloved bride.
Lewis resisted and I am so thankful.
It brings me great comfort to know that one who was much more equipped to face a faith crisis found himself floundering in the ocean called sorrow and grief.
He knew where the boat was.
But he, like me, wasn’t sure he wanted to climb back in.
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Grief has forced me to reexamine every notion I had of God and how He works in the world. I’ve had to pull out all my theological assumptions and compare what I thought I knew to what is in the Bible and what I have experienced in life.
It is exhausting.And necessary.
Like Lewis, I’ve discovered that I had ideas about God, but that they were not necessarily true: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”
I had decided that God acted in certain ways, that prayers guaranteed certain results and that my life as a believer in Christ was destined to be one of favor and blessing because I was honoring Him.
My box for God included room for some pain and suffering-but definitely not enough space for Him to to allow the death of my child and plunge me into this abyss of grief and sorrow.
What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?”
C.S.Lewis
At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon prayed:
“But, God, will you really live here with us on the earth? The whole sky and the highest heaven cannot contain you. Certainly this house that I built cannot contain you either.”
2 Chronicles 6:18 ERV
God has broken out of my box–He was never really in it to begin with.
Only my ideas of Him could be contained in so small a space.
I think I counted months for nearly three years after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.
Just like when he was an infant and toddler.
When he was living and growing I celebrated each milestone. But after he left, I cringed when the twelfth rolled around again.
Every time I folded the calendar back to reveal another four weeks had passed, I felt my heart flip flop in response to time’s unstoppable progression.
The months roll by, the calendar pages turn, soon school will be back in session and you are still not here.
Sometimes I think I have figured out how to do these days that remain between now and when we will be together again.
And sometimes I realize that I haven’t.
Today is one of those days.
I miss you.
I love you.
I can’t round a corner without thinking of you and wishing this was not my life.
But it is.
So I’ll keep on keeping on. Just like you would want me to.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only bereaved parent who has boxed up things post loss and left them untouched for years.
Life kept moving at a fast pace after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven and it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve had the time to even consider going through his stuff.
Time alone was not enough to push me toward doing the hard work of deciding what to keep, what to give away and (most painfully!) what to throw away. But various circumstances forced my hand and I’ve spent much of the last couple of years digging through stuff and digging up memories.
To be sure, not everything has a direct connection to Dominic. I have a giant pile of craft materials that needed sorting and organizing.
Even then, as I put like items together I remembered pushing two littles in a buggy with two older children on either side through the craft store or Walmart. I knew where this tidbit was purchased and what school or church project prompted buying dozens of a certain sticker or wooden cut out.
This past week I’ve been working on “my” side of our two-car garage.
It’s never been used as a garage but instead as a catch-all for a house that has no basement. My side is where I store pantry overflow and all kinds of supplies from toilet paper to party goods.
It’s also where I put some things from Dominic’s kitchen when we had to hurriedly empty his apartment over twelve years ago.
Twelve years. How can it be twelve years?
I finally had to do the hard work of deciding what I should REALLY keep and what it was time to let go of. I don’t like it.I don’t like it one little bit. But it is necessary.
I’m taking it in small doses-two or three hours a day-and trying to give myself grace when even that amount of time doesn’t seem to make a dent.
It’s grueling labor to dig up memories and lay down dreams.
Unrelenting emotional work.
Every bit tossed in the trash is a declaration that he isn’t coming back to claim it. I can’t ask him if he deems it worthy of saving because I can’t ask him anything.
That in itself is a kind of concession to defeat.
Where he is he doesn’t need or miss this stuff but it represents hopes and dreams to me.
It didn’t take long after Dominic’s leaving for life to ramp up and obligations to pour in. We had two graduations and a wedding within two months of his funeral.
Then there were thank-you notes to write, dishes to return and every day chores necessary to manage a home and family.
No escaping what must be done.
It took me a little while to realize that if I was going to survive this lifelong journey I had to make some changes in how and when I responded to requests to do something, be somewhere or participate in outside events. Because no matter how worthy the request, there was only so much of me to go around and I was forced to spend nearly all my energy and time and effort on figuring out how this great wound was impacting me and my family.
I cannot overemphasize how much strength and energy is needed to do the work grief requires.
At first, turning down a request or asking someone to reschedule was relatively easy-the loss was fresh in their minds and they were gracious and understanding. As the weeks and months and now YEARS have passed, it is harder. Not always because they don’t understand but because I sometimes hold myself to an untenable standard that says I should be better by now. I should be able to do all that I could once do. I shouldn’t be so sensitive to the date on the calendar or the place we might meet for lunch or the rainy weather that brings my mood down.
But I’m not able to ignore all those things and sometimes I just can’t do what someone else would like me to be able to do.
So I keep repeating the mantra, “grace and space” to myself.
I need grace-from my own heart FOR my own heart– I must cut myself the slack I would be happy to extend to others.
I need grace from friends and family. I cannot help you understand exactly what it’s like to be me. You can never know all the ways I ache for the life I had before Dominic ran ahead to heaven. You could never imagine all the daily pinpricks my soul must suffer as I walk in this world and am reminded of what I’ve lost.
So you will have to take it on faith when I say, “I just can’t do that”.
I need space.
I need space between me and the noise of the world and the shouting urgency of “to do” lists and project deadlines. So much of the work I must do is silent, solitary work. It takes hours and hours of thinking, talking to God, reading Scripture, journaling and just being alone to sort this all out.
I’m not rejecting YOU-I’m trying to preserve ME.
It isn’t selfishness, it’s love for my family. I refuse to add to their burden by running myself into the ground. I won’t choose to make life harder for them by creating an unecessary crisis.
I don’t know when I might (or IF I might) return to the busy bee I once was. Right now I can’t even imagine it.
I think I will need grace and space for a very, very long time.
thelifeididntchoose 