child loss – Page 256 – thelifeididntchoose

How To Survive December With a Broken Heart

It comes up again and again-and not just for the parents facing their year of “firsts”: How do I survive December with a broken heart?

There’s no single answer or list of things to do that will suit every family.

But there are some general principles that can make even this awful reality a little easier:

Be gentle with yourself. Accept that you will not be able to do all the things you could do before child loss. Understand that tears will fall at the most inconvenient moments and grief waves will take you under when you least expect them to. That’s OK. You do not have to be strong or brave or keep smiling when you are sad. Feel what you feel. Do what you need to do.

Be honest with others. No matter how wonderful it would be if they could truly understand what it feels like to bury a child (without the experience, of course!), it is not the way things ARE. So if you need something from someone, speak up. If you don’t want to go to this or that, say so. If your heart can’t take one more family gathering or meal, send your regrets and stay home. Use “I” statements and say something like, “I’m just not able to participate in gift-giving (or whatever) this year. My heart won’t take it.” They may not like it. But they can’t argue with your experience.

Do not let people cross the boundaries you set up to protect your heart. Once you have figured out where you need to draw the line and have communicated that to others, hold fast. It’s really just fine to not return phone calls or text messages designed to force you to meet others’ expectations. You don’t have to be rude, but you also don’t have to submit your heart to constant trampling.

Be open to change. This is the fourth set of holidays for me without Dominic. Each year I’ve entered the season with certain ideas about how they will go, what will and won’t be helpful, and where I needed to set boundaries. And every year I’ve made adjustments. Some things I thought I COULD do, I couldn’t. Some things I swore I’d NEVER do, I’ve done. Work schedules, plane delays, illness, or even happy surprises alter plans and require adjustment.

Remember that December doesn’t last forever. As hard as this season is, it is only a season. The earth turns, the sun rises and the days pass. If you spend the month in bed with the covers over your head, January will still roll around. If you get up and participate (whatever that looks like for YOU) then January will also show up on schedule.

These days are just like all the rest: in the end we survive them one breath, one moment at a time.

But we do survive.

Repost: Love Tokens

I keep it in my pocket-

an old trinket or a square of fabric or a small photo in a tiny frame.

Read the rest here: Love Tokens

What IS and IS NOT “Impossible”

I freely and publicly admit that until Dominic ran ahead to heaven I was just as likely as the next person to declare something “impossible” when it was really simply hard, distasteful or uncomfortable.

Because before Dominic was snatched away in an instant-irretrievably lost to me this side of eternity-I lacked perspective.

I didn’t realize that as long as someone is breathing, there is hope.

As long as there are choices, you can make them.

As long as people offer to help, you can let them.

What I am facing may seem insurmountable but if money, time and/or energy can make a difference, then no circumstance is truly impossible.

So I carry an absolute yardstick in my heart: death is the only utterly impossible situation.

Anything that falls short of that holds out hope.

I can choose to grab hold or choose to let go, but I have a choice.

It may be excruciating and hard and frustrating and foolhardy, but I can still hold on.

❤

Ten Ways to Love a Mourning Heart at Thanksgiving

We are all on a journey through life and each carry some sort of load. Mine is child loss. Yours may be something else.

We can help one another if we try.

Love and grace grease the wheels and make the load lighter.

Here are ten ways to love a mourning heart at Thanksgiving:

1. Let them grieve. Give space and grace for any outward display of grief or emotion. It doesn’t require comment. Maybe an outstretched hand or a tissue or maybe not. Sometimes silence presence is best.

2. Begin conversation with statements that are true for you and then listen. I appreciate someone sharing their heart with me. It’s really OK to say, “Hey, I’ve wanted to reach out but I just didn’t know how.” I would rather hear that than excuses. ❤

3. Share a memory of their child or their pregnancy (if a child was born straight into heaven). Whenever I hear a story about Dominic I may not have heard before, it is a gift.

4. Speak their child’s name. It may make me cry. But I cry anyway. And if no one says his name I cry because I think they’ve forgotten.

5. Give them room to step away. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed and I just need a breath of fresh air or a moment to gather my strength. Don’t send the cavalry to “rescue” me and don’t make me feel bad by drawing attention to my absence when I return.

6. Find a way to commemorate their child in company with the living. Light a candle, place a photo, set an honorary place at the table, give a gift in his memory to a charity and display the card-there are many ways to make him part of the holidays.

7. Allow them to participate/ not participate as they are able. This will be our fourth set of holidays and I still don’t have a routine that feels “right”. I do enjoy and even crave cooking meals so I appreciate being asked to do that. Some other things are still hard so I appreciate not being forced to do those.

8. Don’t use this once or twice a year gathering to require an extended debrief of how they are feeling/coping/doing. Invite me to share and then respect the boundaries I establish in my sharing. It depends on the day whether I’m going to give you a brief response or a long one. Let me lead the dance.

9. Try not to make assumptions about what is best for their heart. Ask questions instead of making pronouncements. Like I said, I still don’t have any traditions that feel right after nearly four years. I need space to think about and make choices about what may work for THIS Thanksgiving.

10. Remember that all holidays are hard. When the whole family gathers, it highlights even more that my son is missing. Other times it’s easier to play a mental game with myself and pretend he’s just off somewhere. But when the chairs are drawn around the table and his is empty, there’s no denying that he is gone, gone, gone. Lots and lots of grace makes it easier for my heart.

Why I Have To Talk It Out

I admit I’m full of words. When my mama came to pick me up when her best friend was babysitting for awhile, she said, “You can’t have her yet, she’s telling me all kinds of things!”

More than once my mouth got me in trouble.

It’s still the source of most of my problems.

But for a time after Dominic left I found that the only words I could muster beyond what was absolutely necessary were written in my journal. Because the words I wanted to say were bitter and harsh and tasted bad as they came up my throat and threatened to roll off my tongue.

I didn’t want to tell the story of that early morning knock. I didn’t want to speak aloud the terror that gripped my soul, the literal shattering of my heart, the unholy darkness that enveloped me.

I HAD to make phone calls. I was forced to say, “Dominic is dead” over and over and over. Then I wanted to hide in silence and stay on the fringe of conversations that filled our home and the church before we buried him.

It seemed easier to swallow the words than taste them.

But I couldn’t do that forever.

Eventually the words began to rot inside me and make the pain even worse. I had to let them out. I had to talk about it. All of it.

The actual events.

The feelings associated with the accident.

The pain of choosing a cemetery plot, a casket, an order of service, of writing an obituary, of burying my son.

The awful emptiness that one life missing makes in a family of six.

The fact that at some point I woke from the stupor enough to wonder how the God I had worshiped for all these years let this happen.

And I needed someone to listen. I needed someone to be a witness to my words. It was no longer enough to write them down, wrap them up and hide them away.

They had to be spoken so that the power they had over my soul could be broken.

Thank God for people who are willing to listen!

I have friends and family who let me recite the same thing over and over and over so that each telling helps my heart toward healing.

I have several online and in-person communities of bereaved parents who do the same (and more!) because they understand precisely how I feel and can offer hope from their own stories of healing.

Listening is love in action.

If you know someone whose heart carries great grief-and child loss is not the only hard journey hearts are making–offer to listen.

Give up a few minutes to hear how they are really doing, what is really hard, what they really need to say but may be afraid to speak aloud. Leave spaces in conversation so a heart can work up the courage to share. Don’t be quick to offer platitudes that shut down deep discussion.

It often takes many, many repetitions of traumatic events for a heart to begin to heal.

And each time you grant someone permission to share and listen to his or her story, you are applying balm to a weary soul. ❤

Too Scared to Stay

How many reading this enjoy roller coasters? Or scary movies? Or action films?

My guess is that most like one or the other or all three.

Why? Because it’s fun to dip our emotional toe into deep water when we know we can take it out at any moment.

We experience a sort of “high” when the “fight or flight” adrenaline pumps through our veins but our minds know full well that we are in no real danger.

What’s much more difficult is to commit to experience in real time with real people the real emotional roller coaster of hard situations and unending sorrow or pain.

Then people tend to withdraw because they are too scared to stay.

I am so sorry that broken hearts are wounded further when friends or family just can’t bear the pain of watching us hurt and run away instead of walking with us.

They are afraid. I used to be afraid too. But I’m not afraid now.

My new bravery was purchased at great cost. And I don’t want to waste it.

This Valley is teaching my heart to reach out further, quicker, more often and to stick around longer than I was willing to before.

I want to stand with and speak courage to wounded hearts.

I want to help healed hearts that choose to be brave and commit to walk with those in pain.

And I am learning to extend grace to the hearts who choose to run away.

Fear is powerful and I can’t blame them.

But for those who remain, I am so, so grateful.

Repost: Death Is Awful

I have friends who have not only buried a child (some have buried more than one) but have also buried parents, siblings, in-laws and other people close to their hearts in a very short span of time.

And I am appalled when they recite the trite comments doled out by others meant to patch broken hearts and sweep the leftover pieces under the rug of social propriety.

Let me just say this: Death. Is. Awful.

Full stop. No easy change of subject or laughter allowed to make the hearing of it softer.

Read the rest here: Death Is Awful

Parenting After Loss: Giving Surviving Siblings Permission to Live

I wrote this post about things I’m learning almost two years ago.

A couple of the things I’m learning are:

There is no limit to the pain you may have to endure this side of heaven.

Lightning can strike twice in the same place, and fear of what you know by experience trumps fear of the unknown by miles.

I’ve buried one child, I do not want to bury another.

So one of the biggest struggles I face is how to parent my surviving adult children. I do not want their lives circumscribed by my fears.

Are we ALL changed by Dominic’s death? Absolutely! But they are young, at the beginning of life and making choices about direction and life partners and what they want out of the years stretching before them.

I pray every day they will make those choices from a place of freedom and hope instead of a place of confinement and fear.

Can something happen to any one of them? Of course! But it is no more likely today than it was three years ago when I didn’t think it could happen at all.

I will not let my mind and heart borrow trouble from tomorrow. I will choose to focus on today and encourage them to do the same.

While Dominic was here-he LIVED.

I want his brothers and sister to be completely free to live too.

Transforming Pain

I have had my share of pain in life-physical, emotional and psychological.

Some of it I’ve brought on myself and some of it has been thrust upon me.

None of it was pleasant.

But by far the most excruciating pain I have endured is the death of my son. If someone could have induced this pain for five minutes as a preview before Dominic ran ahead to heaven, I would have sworn I couldn’t have withstood it for five minutes more.

Yet here I am not just minutes or months but years later. Still standing.

How? By the grace of God and by choosing to transform that pain into something besides just pain.

I cannot ignore the pain. It has changed me. But I won’t let it dominate me.

Instead I let is goad me into being a better me than I might have been if my heart were whole and unbroken.

I am gentler, more eager to listen to hurting hearts.

I am less likely to judge others and more likely to lend a helping hand. I am committed to walk gently through this life and to cause as little harm as possible and bring as much joy as is mine to give.

I definitely walk with a limp.

But I won’t let it stop me from walking.

❤

Holidays and Grief: Surviving Siblings

I have never wanted to make my life journey with blinders on. I realized young that MY perspective is not the only one. I understand that more clearly now.

So I try hard to think about, acknowledge and accommodate the feelings and needs of others.

But it’s especially challenging since Dominic left us. And doubly so this time of year when every sight, smell and song screams, “It’s the holidays and HE IS NOT HERE!“

I may not be as thoughtful to some in my circle as want to be, but I will expend every ounce of energy and effort I can muster to make space for my living children’s needs during this season.

I promised them the day Dominic ran ahead to heaven our family would not be defined by what we have lost. I committed right then and there we would not sanctify Dominic, wouldn’t whitewash his ornery ways and would not put him on a pedestal against which they would be measured for the rest of their lives.

What I didn’t say, but purposed in my heart, was that I would not allow my own feelings of grief, sorrow, missing and despair to rob them of the mother they deserve. I would not stop being there for THEM-because, let’s face it-Dominic didn’t need me anymore. He is safe in his eternal home.

THEY are here with me in this less-than-perfect, messy and painful world we have to navigate together.

So when I’m working on holiday plans, the first thing I do is ask them what they need from me. I want them to have a safe space to express what’s hard for THEM this year. I welcome ideas, frustrations, hopes and dreams.

I will not shut them down because my heart is hurting.

I know what I think-I have to listen to know what THEY think.

I don’t conduct a sit down interview but over the course of a few days or weeks, I ask probing questions, offer potential scenarios and try to hear the heart behind their words when they answer.

Here are some of the things I ask my kids. Maybe they will be helpful for your family as well:

What’s your work schedule for Thanksgiving/Christmas?
Do you have any other major commitments that we need to work around?
How do you feel about what we did last year? What worked for you, what didn’t work?
Is there something special you really want to do this year?
Is there something you absolutely do NOT want to do this year?
How’s your head going into the holidays? What are you struggling with? What’s easier than this time last year?
Do you need something from me to make the holidays easier?
When would you rather have the main meal? Do you want/need to invite friends or co-workers?
What would the ideal Christmas Eve/Christmas Day look like for you?

There are dozens of corollaries to each of these questions. As my children share, I try to explore the edges of the conversation and probe a little further to get at what is really going on. I am open about my own feelings and fears for the season. I’m honest about where we can compromise and where, because of trying to manage everyone’s needs, we can’t.

I always assure them we will continue to work together, to adjust and to muddle through the best we can.

Humans are flawed and fragile and hearts are unpredictable.

Frustration is inevitable at some point.

Don’t apologize for tears.

We will not have thought of everything.

And that’s OK.

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