Dear Mama,
I know that you never-in your wildest imagination-thought that you would need a day set aside for your broken heart and your empty arms.
Who thinks when they learn a new life is growing inside that this same life might be cut short? What heart is brave enough to consider the possibility?
Yet here you are.
I’m so, so sorry.
Read the rest here: International Bereaved Mother’s Day: An Open Letter to my Fellow Sisters in Loss
International Bereaved Mother’s Day is observed the Sunday before Mother’s Day in the United States. This year it’s tomorrow, May 5, 2019.
I didn’t even know such a day existed until I was a mom that needed it.
Read the rest here: International Bereaved Mother’s Day
I was (and am) relying on my senses to tell me where I am in this process of embracing the life I didn’t choose. Yet they are easily overwhelmed by my daily experience-crying one day, laughing the next, undone by memories again, blessed by a friend’s text or phone call-filled to the brim with input.
I have a hard time sorting it out and looking objectively at what the data suggests.
When I can take a step back, I see that my heart has healed in some measure. I have enfolded the truth that Dominic is not here into who I am and what my life will look like until I join him in heaven.
Read the rest here: [Mis] Perception
For the first couple of weeks after Dominic left us, I couldn’t fall asleep.
It was impossible to close my eyes without a dozen awful scenes flashing behind the lids.
Silent darkness was not my friend.
Eventually exhaustion won and I could fall asleep but couldn’t stay asleep. Two or three hours in and my body had just enough rest to shake slumber and force my heart to face another day (even if the sun wasn’t up yet).
Somewhere around year three I finally settled into a pretty regular pattern of between five and six hours of solid sleep.
But for the past several months I’ve lost the rhythm and am once again struggling.
Lots of changes, lots of stress, lots of physical discomfort and lots of lists floating in my head have landed me back in sleepless territory.
I wish there was a switch I could flip that made it easy to fall and stay asleep. I wish there was a way to stop stray thoughts from invading my consciousness and my dreams. I wish I could have a solid week of solid sleep.
I know it would make everything so much easier to manage.
I’d be calmer, more focused, more energetic and more optimistic.
But it’s a vicious cycle.
I’m hoping long days of hard work in the summer sun will shift my body back to a better rhythm.
Maybe.
Eventually.
I try hard not to imply that MY child loss experience is representative of EVERY child loss experience.
Because, as we all know, every parent’s journey (even parents of the same child) is utterly, incontrovertibly unique.
My son was killed suddenly in an accident. Other parents I know have stories of prolonged illness. Some feared it coming as his or her child struggled with addiction and dangerous choices. And still others bear the added burden of suicide in child loss.
I have always, always felt a special duty to tread lightly with respect to those parents in particular. I want to honor them and never suggest I speak for them. I’ve started and discarded at least a dozen posts on child loss and suicide.
So when a mom who lost a child to suicide shared this in one of our closed groups, I messaged her and asked permission to publish her comment here.
Sheri Yancy Brown graciously agreed.
So here are HER words, precisely as she shared them:
“The Lord showed me this on Friday [Good Friday, 2019]. I hope it is a comfort to those of you who have lost a child to suicide.
“Two of the hardest things to come to terms with regarding Tyrel’s suicide for me (a Christian) have been:
“There’s a very common scripture in the book of Isaiah that has been on my mind this morning because it is Good Friday. It was written long before Christ died on the cross.
“The scripture is:
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5 KJV
“The main questions I ask myself after reading numerous books, attending many support groups, and meeting many people with this type of loss are:
“Was Tyrel’s suicide:
“Look how this scripture literally covers all four situations!
“According to this scripture, the whys don’t really matter and Tyrel’s salvation is not in question. As a believer for all of his short life, he is covered no matter which way you look at it. Tyrel’s unimaginable actions are exactly why Jesus went to the cross.
“The Bible says so.”
I know (really, I do!) that people MEAN well.
I understand the temptation to share cute little sayings like these in response to a bereaved parent’s Facebook post.
What runs through my mind, even five years later when I read this isn’t, “Oh my! Why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I just turn that frown upside down and CHOOSE to be happy instead of sad.”
Instead it’s, “If I could, don’t you think I WOULD?”
If I could just make a mental adjustment and wash away all my sorrow, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Often those who have been spared think that those who haven’t are holding grief too close, refusing to let it go. They think we are using it as an attention getting prop. They rest certain that if it were them, THEY would rise above, get over or overcome grief.
You will never know how thankful I am that YOU. DON’T. REALLY. KNOW.
So when you’re tempted to subtly correct me and (out of the goodness of your heart) try to steer me toward a “cure” for my grief, think about it. Think about how hollow these words might sound in the ear of a mother or father who will never, ever hear or see or touch their child again. Think about how ridiculous it would be to suggest that all it takes to “be happy” is to “choose” correctly.
Think about which one of your children you could live without.
We all experience it from time to time-that moment when your head comprehends that life has kept going but your heart refuses to keep pace.
So today, I’m looking at a calendar that assures me it has been five years since that deputy knocked on my door.
It’s a fact.
My heart says, “It cannot be true. It cannot be that long since I saw my living, breathing son cross the threshold of our family home. It cannot be that long since I made the phone calls that still echo in my ears. It can. not. possibly. be. that. long.”
And yet it is.
If folks ask me how I’m doing, how my family is doing, I usually say we are OK.
Because, all things considered, we ARE.
None of us find daily life unmanageable. None of us have fallen prey to addiction or unhealthy coping mechanisms. None of us sit inside all day, moping and mourning the loss of a life we couldn’t hold onto even if we had seen it slipping away in time to take a firmer grip.
But we are absolutely, utterly, profoundly CHANGED.
I often think back to old Star Trek episodes that showed crew members transporting to the surface of an unknown planet. Their bodies were broken down into the tiniest component molecules and reassembled somewhere else.
I think that’s what this life is like.
We’ve all been disassembled and reassembled.
But instead of everything falling back into place, there are missing bits here and there, gaps too small for others to see but very, very real to us. Connections lost. Memories without proper context.
Feelings floating free of any anchor, bubbling up at the most inconvenient moments.
And we all just plain MISS HIM.
We miss Hector Dominic DeSimone and who he is, what he brought to the table and car rides and family gatherings.
We miss who we were before we knew loss that burrows deep in your bones. We miss the unmitigated joy and celebration we could toss around like confetti at the slightest provocation.
So today, unlike most days, we will give in to the sorrow. We will remember that morning. We won’t brush away the tears or the sad memories.
He is worth every second and every heartache.
He is never forgotten.
He is always, always on our minds.
I used to look at tombstones in cemeteries and do the math between the dates.
I was most focused on how long this person or that person walked the earth.
I still do that sometimes. But now I do something else as well.
I look to the left and the right to see if the person who ran ahead left parents behind. My eye is drawn to the solitary stones with the same last name next to a double monument clearly honoring a married pair.
And then I do a different kind of math.
I count the years between the last breath of the child and the last breath of his or her mama.
Because while that first date marked an end for everyone else, for the mama, it marked the beginning of the rest of her life- a life she never imagined nor would have chosen.
I wonder how many lives have been cut short by the effects of grief. I know some folks have tried to research it, but it’s so hard. Because grief ends up doing things to bodies that look like aging or like other disease processes and it’s really difficult to tease it out.
But those of us who live this life know.
We know.
What’s a moment for everyone else, is a lifetime for us. What is a date on the calendar, a trip to a funeral home, a casserole delivered to a door in hopes of lifting spirits for everyone else, is so much more for us.
I don’t begrudge your ignorance.
I celebrate it!
My heart breaks every single time another name is added to the roles of “bereaved parent”.
I think a lot about the generations gone before. Before vaccinations, before penicillin, before so many modern blessings that lengthen life and give hope where there used to be none.
I think about the families involved in WWI and WWII. I understand the need to call the first war “The Great War” and assume such atrocities would stop mankind from falling headlong into them again.
But it didn’t.
So, so many families that made the highest sacrifice.
So, so many parents that hung that photo of their son or daughter on the wall and never moved it-because they were as frozen in time as their child.
I have a friend who does home-based physical therapy. She often goes to the homes of elderly patients and lovingly and gracefully listens to their stories. If it is part of their history, they almost always point out the child who never grew older and tell the tale of how much they miss him or her.
It’s so, so hard for others to understand how very different child loss and out-of-order death is from any other loss in this life.
But it is not a moment.
It is not even a week or month or years.
It’s a lifetime.
We miss them and mourn them for a lifetime.
I’m not sure when I’ll get the hang of this life after loss.
Five years is long enough to have completed a college degree, so you’d think it would be long enough to explore the edges of how to walk in the world without my son, without the family I used to have, without the confidence I once enjoyed that “every little thing was gonna be alright”.
But it’s not.
I’m still feeling my way in the dark much of the time.
New challenges greet me and I have to navigate them with the profoundly changed “me” that I neither understand nor like.
I make mistakes.
I get upset and I upset others.
If I didn’t believe that there was a Day when all this would be redeemed, I would just give up.
But I DO believe that.
It doesn’t take the pain away. It doesn’t soften the feeling of failure when my sorrow stops me being what others need me to be. It doesn’t blow soft breezes across my weary soul.
It gives me focus and a goal. It gets me out of bed so I persevere. It helps my heart hold on and not give in to despair.
Today is not a good day.
Tomorrow doesn’t look good either.
But one day-
One. Glorious. Day.
In response to something I posted in a bereaved parents’ group a friend used the term “tangible absence” to describe what I was feeling.
She is so right.
When I imagine something I’ve never actually experienced-even when I might say “I miss such and such” it’s not the same as when I’ve had something and it’s been taken away.
I can only miss the imaginary in an ephemeral, insubstantial way. I miss what I once possessed in a tangible way.
I know exactly the size and shape and sound and substance of the person that SHOULD be here but isn’t.
I know the energy he would add to a room or a conversation.
I know the point of view that’s missing from the debate or decision making.
And I miss him like crazy. ❤
~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
![Repost: [Mis]Perception](https://thelifeididntchoose.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/fear-is-what-we-feel-brave-is-what-we-do.jpg?w=811)
thelifeididntchoose 