My daughter, Fiona, wrote this last year, in the voice of her brother who ran ahead to heaven.
I am so thankful for her and so sorry that she has gained this wisdom at great cost.
Some of the bravest, most loving women I know are those who have suffered one of life’s greatest losses. I hope you know how truly beautiful you are.
“Dear Mom,
Read the rest here: From The Child Not Here on Mother’s Day
When it first happened all I could think about was getting through a minute, then a day and then all the decisions and days leading up to a funeral or memorial service.
There’s no road map.
Even when others come alongside (and many, many did!) there’s just no easy way to navigate that part of the journey.
And then I realized that in addition to all the “regular” days that absolutely, positively break your heart, I had to forge a path through “special” days.
It was overwhelming!
Mother’s Day was especially challenging that first year. Our loss was fresh and we’d had to acknowledge and celebrate two graduations and a wedding was about a month away. How in the world could I honor my living children and also safeguard my broken heart?
We muddled through by having Mother’s Day at my daughter’s apartment co-hosted by some of her sweetest and most compassionate friends. Not a lot of fanfare, but good food, good company and a quiet acknowledgment of Dom’s absence but also my living children’s presence.
It was a gift.
This is my sixth Mother’s Day. Every year is different. Every year presents new challenges and every year things change.
Since discovering there is an International Bereaved Mother’s Day my heart has taken advantage of having a day to think about and honor Dominic and then another day to think about and honor my living children.
That helps.
I wrote this post three years ago but can’t really improve on it so I’ll share it again. I pray that each heart who finds Mother’s Day hard will lean in and take hold of the hem of His garment.
It’s really the only way.
Read the rest here: Mother’s Day as a Bereaved Mother
We’ve all done it-chosen to swallow words instead of share them.
Or we’ve chosen to fake a smile instead of giving another person an honest peek into our hearts.
Or we’ve pretended, pretended, pretended in the hopes folks sniffing around will go away.
But it’s not a long term solution to the pain we carry, the scars we bear or the stories that need telling.
Hiding often seems a good idea at the time. Conflict avoided. Inconvenient conversations postponed. Hard issues ignored. Respite from harsh words, hard feelings and hopeless discussions obtained.
I’ve hidden for a fair share of my life.
As a child it seemed that the best way to hover just under the parental radar was to go along to get along. Don’t hold too many preferences too tightly. Say “yes” even when your heart says “no”. Let the loud ones prevail. Stay quiet, stay small and stay out of trouble.
As a young married to a significantly older husband, it served me well. Don’t rock the boat. Silent assent keeps things smoother. Say “yes” even when your heart says “no”. It’s really not worth the hassle to do otherwise. Stay quiet, stay small and stay out of trouble.
In a multitude of leadership positions within the church community, it served me well. Don’t overstep-remember you aren’t a salaried employee. Check your spirit and make sure your own heart is right. Let it go and get over it. Say “yes” even when your heart says “no”. Stay quiet, stay small and stay out of trouble.
The problem with hiding from feelings and hiding from hard things and hiding from messy relationships is that I can’t hide forever. Eventually someone or something will force those things to the top. And if I haven’t been dealing with them all along, they gain strength and intensity in the waiting.
I don’t hide anymore.
Dominic’s death unleashed a thousand unspoken words, a thousand unexpressed feelings.
Suddenly I had a lot to say.
And it didn’t all have a direct connection to Dominic’s leaving but it was his leaving that made them impossible to hide anymore. Once the dam broke in my heart it ALL flooded out.
Or trickled.
Or dripped.
Decades of uncomfortable conversations I had avoided became unavoidable. Years of relationship patterns that served no one were examined and remade. I’m still finding bits that need attention, things I really need to speak aloud. I will sometimes try to hide. It doesn’t last long though.
What I’m learning from refusing to hide is that it’s so much healthier! It’s so much better to speak my truth (always, hopefully!) in love.
When I silence my heart, I only postpone and prolong and pile up hurt.
It doesn’t go away.
It burrows in and makes a home, pushing out everything else.
It’s no solution.
Our hearts and minds are resistant to change and if you, like me, are one who hid to avoid conflict, who swallowed words and wounds and worry, it will be hard.
But try.
Try to find ways (even if it’s writing letters to some folks) to express your true feelings. Make sure you are speaking lovingly as well as truthfully. Get a friend to read your note or hear you out and give you feedback.
Then offer the important people in your life your heart-your true heart-instead of hiding.
❤
We talk about a lot of things as if they didn’t reflect a real person and a real life.
Addiction is one of them. And let me just tell you, every single number is a life and behind every single life is a family.
Statistics are easy to toss around until one of those numbers represents YOUR child.
My son was killed in a single-vehicle motorcycle accident. One of the 76 individuals who died on a motorcycle in Alabama in 2014. If you look it up, you’ll find tables printed with clean edges and comparative data one year to the next.
But if you look at me-and hold up a photo from BEFORE-you’ll see grief etched into a mama’s face that can’t be measured, sifted or weighed.
My son was not an addict. He was a health nut. But he liked his motorcycle and never saw the contradiction between spending hours at the gym then putting that beautiful body on a fast moving, unprotected engine-on-wheels. A helmet was not enough to save him that night.
Addicts don’t start out wanting the life so many of them end up living. They take a puff or a pill or a drink and think it’s all in fun. They have no way to know that the one moment of weakness or even purposeful exploration may result in a lifetime of struggle.
Once caught in the cycle of craving and crawling out and caving again they may or may not eventually find the light. They may or may not become sober for the rest of their days. They may or may not have the inner strength, the outside support, the medical intervention and inpatient treatment they need to conquer this demon.
And it is a demon.
Addiction is never a choice even when the first indulgence into drugs or alcohol is.
Parents living with addicted children do everything they can to guide them to help. They try tough love, abundant grace, boundaries, threats and rewards. Some even move their families to try to escape habitual influences on their child-hoping against hope that a new place and new friends will create a safe space where addiction can’t flourish.
It rarely works. In the end, addiction takes too many of our children. Addiction kills.
And the wreckage left the other side of those deaths is enormous. It’s messy and ugly and hard to sort through.
The one thing NO parent of an addicted child needs is someone else’s misguided advice on how they could have “saved” his or her child. They don’t need quips about “seeing it coming”. They don’t need anyone to heap shame on them because of the choices their child made and the disease that robbed them of choice in the end.
So when we talk about addiction and numbers and treatment and responsibility and especially death, we need to remember that every single statistic is a person.
Every single person has a family.
And that family is devastated.
Speak gently. Extend grace. Offer love.
They already know shame.
This life is not all sadness and sorrow, death and darkness.
It was. For a very, very long time all I could see was distant flickers of light.
They were just enough to keep me going but not enough to lift the utter blackness that surrounded me.
Now I would characterize life as hazy gray-most things still filtered through a lens of grief but generally brighter.
I can see and feel the change. It’s not as hard to get up most mornings. Not as hard to put dates on a calendar. Not as hard to commit to social activities and to actually show up. Not as hard to talk about family life with strangers and acquaintances. Not as hard to do so many things that were practically impossible in the first weeks, months and years.
I am so, so grateful.
And there are good things-very good things-happening in my family.
I’m even more grateful for those.
A baby who could have had a sad story has a happy one! He is growing and grinning and getting ready (within the month, we think) to escape the hospital. His dad is home from deployment. His mom is healing like a champ from severe illness and from her surgery. They are forming a happy trio and full of love.
My niece is graduating high school. All the kids in that generation are grown ups just as we finally added one to begin the next.
My mother and father are still here to enjoy these things.
If you are afraid you will never, ever feel joy again, I understand. That was one of the most frightening aspects of early days and months and years. I could not imagine having that heavy, dark cloud envelope me for the rest of my life.
It seems impossible it could ever be otherwise.
But I’m here to tell you-it doesn’t have to be that way. If you reach for the tiny lights you can just barely see in the distance and make whatever feeble and faltering steps forward, your heart will learn to feel something besides sorrow again.
At first it may only be a split-second when a smile nearly, but not quite, crosses your lips.
Then it might be an hour when you realize you’ve actually been completely engaged and present with your family or good friend.
One day you will be slipping into bed and think, “Today was a pretty good day”. It will shock you, sadden you and encourage you all at the same time.
It’s not a smooth upward journey that lands you out of the pit of grief.
It’s a bumpy road that tosses you around. Highs and lows, ups and downs. And it lasts a lifetime.
But if you purpose to hold on with both hands, to stay the course, keep heading toward the bits of light, laughter, love and loveliness teasing you in the distance, you will make progress.
Bad things have happened-the worst, in fact.
Bad things still happen.
But good things happen too.
Very good things.
I want to be present for them, don’t you?
I learned this lesson years ago.
As a matter of fact, I had a cute little picture on my fridge of a sinking ship that said. “Another day, another disaster”.
That was before I had actually lived through disaster.
Now it’s engraved on my heart as well as my mind.
I think I’m in control. I think my “to do” list determines a day. I think I can set the alarm and set my agenda.
But I’m not. It doesn’t and I can’t.
Last week I was rocking and rolling, moving and grooving. Making molehills out of mountains and working my list.
Today I’m sitting in my chair, heating pad on my back, barely able to move.
My body hates me.
This is the hardest part of chronic illness and lifelong grief-I want to be able to plan ahead, make progress, achieve momentum and finish tasks. But I just can’t. I can’t be sure when I go to bed that the next day is going to be anything like what I hope it will be.
If you think weather forecasts are unpredictable, they are solid compared to my life.
And while I absolutely, positively accede God is in control, is sovereign, does not answer to me or anyone else and can order my life and the world as He sees fit; I would love, love, love to have two days in a row that followed a pattern of positive progress.
So I’m just a *little* bit frustrated.
I know I need to adjust my expectations.
I’m trying.
Really.
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 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.
thelifeididntchoose 