Our family watched the movie “Sully” the other night.
I cried when they showed the real people whose lives were spared hugging and thanking Captain Sully for his choice to do what was necessary to save them.
Because I know that each life saved also saved lives of others–saved them from the awful burden of grief and sorrow that would have become their daily experience.
Read the rest here: Rejoice With Those Who Rejoice
I participate in a number of online support groups for bereaved parents.
And one topic that makes the rounds at least once a week-often once a day-is how those outside our experience cannot truly understand our experience.
Because it’s true-you THINK you can imagine the pain of child loss if you have children, but even the most vivid imagination can’t conjure the utter blackness that waits on the other side of hearing, “Your son is dead.”
There’s a great divide between me and those who have not experienced child loss.
But it’s one I hope they never have to cross.
Because it’s a mercy to not know.
If all of us could fathom the pain of losing a child, no one would bear children–the risk would be too great.
So while the gap can be a source of misunderstanding and isolation for ME, it is a safeguard for YOU.
And I am grateful for it. ❤
I wrote this originally two years ago-about 20 months after Dominic ran ahead to heaven.
While I continue to grow stronger, to heal a bit more, to find more joy in the every day and the special days, I am can still be felled by a single scent, thought, song or memory.
Truth is, I miss him. I miss my son.
And there is no cure for that.
No matter how tightly I strap on my armor, grief sends arrows through the tiniest unprotected chink and pierces my heart.
There is no defense against the sound, the smell, the wayward memory that sends me back in time to when Dominic was alive and with me.
And once there, to drag myself forward to today—where he is neither—is torture.
Read the rest here: Not as Strong as I Look
It was a long time before I wanted to believe that I received any gifts worth keeping from this life I didn’t choose.
I knew I had tears, pain, agonizing sorrow, loss, heartache, dashed hopes, empty arms.
If I could give those back and regain my son, I would do it in less than a heartbeat.
I can’t, so I’m left here to ponder what else I’ve received from burying a child.
And I am learning that I have been given some gifts I truly cherish, although the price was higher than I would have willingly paid.
I call them grace gifts: heart-expanding, hope-enlarging.
I am learning compassion, which is something quite different than sympathy or pity which are just compassion’s paper stand-ins.
My heart is tuned to the suffering of others in a way I never knew before, even if their suffering is very different than my own.
I have been given new eyes for the people around me. I’m not as quick to decide I know someone’s story based on the clothes they wear or the car they drive.
I’m more patient with strugglers and stragglers although I am less patient with braggarts and bullies.
I’m more inclined to listen than I used to be.
My heart writes my “to do” list instead of my head-people over projects.
Every. Time.
I love harder but more loosely than I did before. I’ve learned you can only hold on to this moment, this smile, this hug, and the rest is in God’s hands.
I am quicker to forgive-myself and others-because we are all failures in one sense or another.
I speak blessings aloud instead of simply in my head, too embarrassed lest anyone should laugh at such an archaic tradition.
I am learning to let go of my own and others’ expectations.
I shed tears when I need to, smile when I want to, belly laugh when I can.
I’m very much NOT the person I was before Dominic ran ahead to heaven-in many ways a sadder person.
But in many ways a wiser one as well.
I have always loved candles. Something in the flickering light speaks to my heart.
It’s one of my favorite parts of early evenings-watching the candles I light on every flat surface cast a soft glow and chase the darkness.
Even a small light offers hope.
Christmas Eve is a natural time to gather with family and friends, to honor the ones no longer present, to share our love, our memories and our sorrow.
So when I ran across this post on a Compassionate Friends site, I wanted to share it. I hope it blesses your heart like it blesses mine.
This four candle ritual is a beautiful way to create space for tears and also invite laughter and hope into hurting hearts.
It’s hard to watch since winning a medal is off the table. They lost their place in front when they took that awful tumble.
But we cheer them on-the limping athletes that manage to cross the finish line.
And we should.
Read the rest here: Not Giving Up-A Victory Worth Cheering
Christmas is fast approaching so I’m posting this one last time. I hope it helps someone who is struggling to share how hard it can be to “make merry” when a heart is broken. ❤
I know it is hard. I know you don’t truly understand how I feel. You can’t. It wasn’t your child.
I know I may look and act like I’m “better”. I know that you would love for things to be like they were: BEFORE. But they aren’t.
I know my grief interferes with your plans. I know it is uncomfortable to make changes in traditions we have observed for years. But I can’t help it. I didn’t ask for this to be my life.
Read the rest here: Grief and Holidays:What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family
This will be the [eleventh] Christmas without Dominic.
I’m certain that for some of my family and many of my friends, they are less and less aware of his absence. That’s completely natural and understandable.
But for me, his absence looms just as large THIS Christmas as it did that FIRST Christmas.
Even if you do realize how hard it is for grievers during the holidays, you might not have any idea how to show you care.
I came across this list originally published Family Life Today that gives 25 ideas to give holiday hope to the grieving and wanted to share it because I think it is wonderful.
I can promise you that any hurting heart would be delighted to have a friend or family member reach out in one or more of these ways.
25 Christmas Gifts or Remembrances for the Brokenhearted
1. A tree that can be planted in the family’s yard in memory of the loved one (or a gift certificate to a nursery that can be used to purchase a tree in the spring)
2. Bibles, Christmas Poinsettias, or library books given as memorials
3. Memorials to the local church or charities
4. Home videos of the loved one (especially ones of activities that the family may not have)
5. A scrapbook filled with pictures of the loved one
6. Special Christmas ornaments (for example, if the child played the piano, see if you can find an ornament in the shape of a piano)
7. Books such as Streams in the Dessert and When Life is Changed Forever
8. A personal item that would become a memento about the loved one’s personality or gifting
9. Gift certificates to a cabin or lodge, or to a place that the loved one once enjoyed
10. An original poem about the deceased
11. A journal from friends and family with written memories about the deceased
12. A written tribute to the deceased (The Best Gift You Can Ever Give Your Parents by Dennis Rainey and David Boehi, explains how you can do this.)
13. Addressing their Christmas cards or notes
14. Joining them in holiday shopping or doing the shopping for them
15. Asking if you can help decorate their home for Christmas
16. Sharing homemade Christmas cookies
17. Arranging family photographs in albums
18. Inviting them to decorate a gingerbread house
19. Picking them up for Christmas services at church and holiday get-togethers
20. Helping them shop for that “perfect gift” that they can give to others in memory of their loved one
21. Decorating a small tree with ornaments that have special memories of the loved one
22. Helping them write holiday memories
23. Organizing a candle-light memorial for close friends and family
24. Having a family-time of singing some of the deceased’s favorite Christmas carols and hymns
25. Giving the brokenhearted blank journals to write Bible verses that remind them of God’s presence, such as 2 Corinthians 1:3-4a and Jeremiah 29:11
I’m kind of an overachiever.
I grew up in a family where the motto was “You can do whatever you want to do if you want to do it badly enough”.
If you promised to go somewhere, do something, make something, provide something-well you better go, do, make or provide.
NO excuses allowed.
That kind of work ethic does set you apart and help you get ahead.
But it can also set you up for ultimate, catastrophic failure.
Because there will come a moment in every life when events beyond your control overwhelm your heart and prevent you from going, doing, making, providing.
And if your self-worth is built upon a foundation of never letting anyone down, never asking for help, never being needy-well, then you go from feeling worthy to feeling worthless in a heartbeat.
Before Dominic ran ahead to heaven I had short seasons of helplessness due to illness. Those few days and weeks were hard but I knew that I would soon return to the woman I was before and could resume the work that was essential to my feeling worthy of love and respect.
These last years since his departure have proven to be an extended period of helplessness and brokenness that continue to prevent me from doing, doing, doing.
And worse, that have required me to ask for help-over and over and over again.
But you know what I’m learning? I’m learning that my worth is not based on what I can give.
I do not have to earn love. If what I’m getting from others is because of what I do for them, then it’s not real love.
I do not have to justify my existence by working myself to death. If that is the only reason people want me around, then it’s a lousy one.
I’m also learning that refusing help is pride. Pure and simple.
I can wrap it up in any excuse I want, but the root is self-importance and insistence that I can “do it myself” like a defiant two-year-old.
NO ONE can do it all themselves.
We ALL need help.
Asking for it and receiving it gracefully is strength, not weakness.
We do it all the time in the physical world-leave the shopping cart in line with the admonition to the person behind us to “hold our place” while we run to get that forgotten item.
We leave a gap for that minivan to pull in just where the construction cones narrow a highway from two lanes to one.
We open a door and step aside so the elderly lady with her hands full can manage to get through without dropping the load.
But most of us are not as good at it in relationships.
I think part of the reason is because we are often unaware of the NEED to do it. We don’t have external cues like traffic cones or physical barriers or long lines waiting to check out or get in.
So we miss the opportunity to step aside, or step back or simply wait a moment for another heart to catch up or move over or step through.
Sometimes it’s because our minds are so used to multi-tasking and treating every single minute as if “time is money” that we are unwilling to slow down enough to truly HEAR another heart.
I find that if I’m not very, very careful, I spend a good part of the time I’m supposed to be listening, constructing my response before the person I’m “listening” to has even finished her comment.
It takes a lot of discipline not to do that.
And I don’t always exercise it.
I want to be a person that holds space for others. I want to be a heart that listens well and pays attention to the message another heart is sharing.
I believe that when I do that, I can lighten a load.
Because often what someone needs is just to know they are seen,
they are heard and
they are loved.
