Category: bereaved parent

Holiday Planning Helps for Grieving Parents

As much as I hate the mashup of Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas that assaults my senses every time I walk into a store, it IS a reminder that, like it or not, the holidays are coming.

displays-before-halloween

I wrote these posts a few weeks back so that grieving parents and their families could begin to think about and make plans for year-end celebrations.

I know it’s hard-it continues to be hard for me as I approach the third (!) set of holidays without one of my children at the table.

But it is harder without a plan. 

So here are links to the posts.  I pray they are a small help for heartbroken mamas and daddies:

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Grief and Holiday Plans: Working Out the Details

 

 

family-reunion

 

Grief, Holidays and Hard Conversations

 

 

 

its hurting again

 

 

 

Grief and Holidays:What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family

 

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Practical Ideas for Dealing with the Holidays after Child Loss

Accommodating Grief

The doctor I see every six months or so for my rheumatoid arthritis always fusses at me.

One of the routine questions is, “How’s your pain level?”

I usually say, “About a three.”

And then she looks at my hands and my feet-at the swollen joints and twisted toes-and shakes her head.

But here’s the deal:  sure they hurt, sure I can’t do all the things I used to do, sure I have to do many things differently than I did them when my hands and feet were unaffected by this disease-but I’m STILL moving and doing what needs to be done.

I don’t really know how to do anything else.

And that’s how it is with this grief I lug around-it’s heavier some days than others-but I’m STILL moving and doing what needs to be done.

fall still moving.jpg

This is not the life I thought I would be living, but it’s the life I have.

So I make accommodations for my sorrow just like I make accommodations for my hurting hands and crooked toes.

  • I try not to over-schedule my days.  If I have an appointment I mark it on the calendar and refuse to pile other commitments on top of it.  That way if I’m wiped out I have some built in down time.
  • I prioritize what needs to be done.  Whether it is for a week or a day, I jot down a list (still using paper-but a phone would work) and then decide what are the two or three MOST important tasks that must be done in that time frame.  If I find myself running behind because it’s a hard grief day (or week), I can quickly make choices that ensure the needful things are done and the others laid aside for when I have more energy to do them.  I’m less anxious about what I don’t get finished because I know I did the most important things first.
  • I build rest into my days.  When I’m overtired, I’m more susceptible to grief attacks. I pause every now and then to sit or take a quick walk outside or simply change my work from detail-oriented to broad strokes.  I have more flexibility because I work at home but even in an office it’s possible.  My husband walks every day on his lunch hour-sunshine and physical activity make his afternoons easier to bear.
  • I ask for help. When I’m drowning in grief, I reach out for a lifeline.  There’s no shame in asking for help.  I have a good friend that I can text or call anytime I need to and ask for prayer or a listening ear.  I belong to a couple of online grief groups and they are full of people who understand my pain and will lift me up in prayer and encourage my heart when it feels especially broken.
  • I accept my limitations.  My toes don’t allow me to wear beautiful shoes anymore so I’ve learned to wear what fits instead of what’s in fashion.  I am not the same person I was before I buried a child so I’m learning to live with the new me.  I don’t like crowds.  I don’t like unexpected change.  I feel anxious in unfamiliar places and around strangers.  I make choices that limit my exposure to those things when possible.
  • I shake off the really awful day.  I can’t help that some days take a nosedive into terrible as soon as I leave the bed. I admit that grieving is hard, that it will continue to be hard.  But I won’t let my worst days be my only days.

I am not in control of everything, but I can control some things.

I would not have chosen this life for myself, but I can make choices that help make it bearable.

losses-and-choices-nouwn

 

 

 

You Can Only Hold On To What You Refuse to Let Go Of

Those hours before I planted one last kiss on my son’s forehead, I held his hand.  

I nodded at the people filing past to pay their respects with my arm tucked behind me, desperate to cling to my child.

no one can snatch them

And I’m still clinging.  

I will not let him go.  

I don’t care how many days or months or years march on taking me further from the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand or the brightness of his smile-I refuse to release my grasp.

It’s hard for someone who has never buried a child to understand why we who have are compelled to speak about them, to post pictures of them, to air our great grief and share our great hope of reunion.

I didn’t have a clue before it was me.

But this is all we have.

There will be no new experiences, no fresh memories, no photos marking higher achievements or life passages.  

So I will hold onto Dominic as a little boy who was so stubborn he would sit in the floor and cry in frustration because he couldn’t yet crawl.

I will hold onto Dominic as a young man who could argue anyone under the table until they gave in because, right or wrong, he wasn’t giving up.

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I will hold onto Dominic who taught himself how to play the drums and pounded away when I took my daily walk so that it wouldn’t be too loud for my ears.

I will hold onto Dominic who talked his way into a program that admitted few students even though he had missed the first semester of classes.

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I will hold onto Dominic who could fight like a banty rooster when he was mad but be as tender as a mother hen with someone who was hurting.

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I will hold onto Dominic who would have never wanted this for me, who would have done anything he could to prevent this great sorrow resting on my shoulders.

I refuse to let go.

Because he is my son.

There is no past tense for a mother’s love.  

as long as I live

Relentlessly Forward

The sharp shard stabs deep when I’m unprepared.

Drifting off to sleep

Driving down the road

Doing the laundry.

He’s not here.

He’s not coming back.

His living presence is taken from me.

His smile,

Unseen.

His voice,

Unheard.

His arms,

Out of reach.

Untouchable.

And the gap widens every day

Between the last time and this moment.

No way to slow it down.

No path to go back.

pencil-drawing-bereaved-mother

 

 

Broken, But Not Beyond Repair

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.

~children’s rhyme

Shattered beyond repair-that certainly describes my broken heart in the first days, weeks and months after Dominic’s leaving.

I felt like Humpty Dumpty.

bag-of-fragments

The pieces were too small to find, much less glue back together in anything resembling wholeness.

And the essence of the “old me”-the person that existed before loss-was spilled onto the ground, leaking strength and life and joy into the dry earth.

Humpty Dumpty had no hope-the king’s men and horses were powerless to breathe life into the lifeless bits and pieces that were left.

But I don’t have to depend on the king’s men or the king’s horses.  

I have access to the King Himself.

I am not separated by a veil from the Mercy Seat.

I can come boldly before the Throne of Grace and pile my broken life on the Altar of Hope.

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

Hebrews 4:16 MSG

The One Who made me can remake me.

He IS remaking me.

I have no illusions that the cracks won’t show.

But I am trusting that my new fragility will make me both more grace-filled and more grace dependent.   

grace-sufficient

 

 

 

 

 

Falling Leaves

We think leaves fall when we turn the calendar page to Autumn months.

Piles of red, gold and orange land beneath trees that grow increasingly barren until one day they are truly naked.

But leaves begin to fall as early as July-hardly noticed because they drift down lonely, one by one.  

single-leaf

No one is looking for them then.  

And green grass grows tall to hide them.

We think people live to the fullness of years.  They begin in spring and pass through all the seasons before the cold winter claims them.

old-lady

But some survive only one season, or two–never enjoying the fruitful harvest of the latter years the younger years of hard work are meant to produce.

Unlike early falling leaves, early deaths are perceived and acknowledged.

Shocking and unexpected, people gather round to discuss the tragedy, the sorrow and the lost future of one who dies young.

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But then they go away-caught up in the seasons of their own lives.  

And the green grass grows tall to hide the ones who left too soon.

No one is looking for them anymore.  

old homeplace

 

 

Repost: There’s a Hole in my Bucket

 

I was talking to my husband the other day about how hard it is to describe the ongoing difficulty of living with child loss.

And this song popped into my head….

There’s a Hole in My Bucket

Confluence

Like most parents who have buried a child, a line is drawn through my life.

April 12, 2014 changed everything.

Whenever I hear a date or a memory drifts across my mind, I think, “that was so many days, months or years BEFORE or AFTER Dominic left us”.  I can plot events on a calendar like I’m making a history timeline.

Put this one here and that one there. It seems so simple and straightforward 

But daily life is much more complex.  

I live in a world where “before” and “after” run together in a mighty torrent.  And I can’t control the way they mix and churn.

river-rapids

These past few days I’ve been pet sitting for my eldest son, James Michael,  and my daughter-in-law while both are out of town for work training.

They just moved from North Carolina to Florida and are still unpacking.

packing-boxes

So while I’m here I’ve been helping to put things away and clear the boxes.  I decided that working in the office was a good place to start-I figured I couldn’t do much damage by putting books on shelves and pens in cups.

None of these things belonged to Dominic.

But as I opened the boxes I was flooded with memories.  

I found a scrapbook my daughter made for JM’s high school graduation-filled with photos of my three boys-years upon years of adventures, goofy faces, travel and achievement.

Another box held my son’s old Bible with a couple of church bulletins tucked inside.  I was tossed back to the time when we all sat in the same pew, strong voices blending in worship, hands together in service-when I could not have imagined we would be one less-I only dreamed then of adding to the family, not taking away.

There was the graduation program from Auburn School of Veterinary Medicine.

james-michael-grad-auburn

Just weeks after burying Dominic we were celebrating the culmination of four years’ hard work.  It was supposed to be a rip-roaring party, but it was a quiet dinner instead.  

And then onto the mementos marking James Michael’s transitions since then:  from single to married; from sheriff’s deputy to Air Force captain; from West Virginia to North Carolina to Florida.

All important events that were missing Dominic.

Celebrations and achievements that were a bit smaller because we are fewer.

Even as nostalgia swept over me, excitement also filled my heart because James Michael and his wife were beginning a new chapter.

I was happy to be helpful.  

Encouraged that I could be of use in this season where many times I feel useless.

And I thought about rivers-rivers of time, of memories, of experience and of dreams.

Confluence:   a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point, especially of two rivers of equal strength.

This is where I find myself right now-swimming, drifting, sometimes drowning in the rivers

of “what was”

and “what is yet to be”

as they join in the “right now”.

 

 

 

Feelings; The Bane of my Existence — Boxx Banter

From my friend and fellow bereaved mother, Janet Boxx.

Choosing to go THROUGH grief is frightening, and hard, and takes so very much work, energy and commitment. 

I, too, would often rather think about my grief experience than feel it.  But it is the only hope for healing.

“How do you feel about that?”, Ruth, my grief counselor asked. Tears filled my eyes and choked my throat as I desperately tried to prevent them from falling, to prevent a sob from escaping, while my mind grappled for words to define my feelings. For such a wordy person I find it ironic how completely […]

via Feelings; The Bane of my Existence — Boxx Banter

Subtitles

My husband is the child of immigrants.  And even thirty years after coming to America, my in-laws preferred their native Italian to English.

italian-village

So when we would be in a crowded room, comments flying, I struggled to keep up with what was being said because I didn’t speak the same language.

As the years went by and our relationship deepened, I realized they had the same struggle when I would try to communicate complex truth in English.  It wasn’t their heart language and some things just didn’t translate well.

Sometimes feelings got hurt because what one of us thought we were saying was not what the other person heard.

Subtitles would have been useful.

The other day in an attempt to keep my unwell body in a chair, I pulled up Amazon and picked a movie.  It was in French with subtitles.

I thought, “I’ll try it.”

But as the movie went on, I realized that I was unable to give full attention to either the action of the movie or the subtitles that interpreted the dialogue.

It took way more effort than I was willing to commit to what was supposed to be a relaxing couple of hours.

So I turned it off.

Today someone in a bereaved parents group to which I belong asked if anyone else found holidays exhausting.

The comments were a resounding “yes”!

The more I thought about it the more I realized that a big part of what makes it so exhausting is a communication gap.

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I am not the same as I was before burying a child.  

My family is not the same.  

Nothing is the same.

Some of the “not the same” is the gap between my understanding of how I have changed and the lack of understanding by others about how I have changed.

Many friends, extended family members and acquaintances continue to relate to me as if I’m the “old” me. That creates tension and requires energy to deal with-I either have to overlook it, try to help them understand or figure out how to deal with it some other way.

We’re just not speaking the same language anymore.

Sometimes I think subtitles would be helpful.

But even then it would still be exhausting.