A funeral or memorial service seems like a final chapter. We close the coffin, close the doors and everyone goes home.
But for bereaved parents and their surviving children, it’s not an end, it is a beginning.
Much like a wedding or birth serves as the threshold to a new way of life, a new commitment, a new understanding of who you are, burying a child does the same.
Read the rest here: Loving Well: Transitioning From “Good-bye” to Grief
This was not my experience-all my children were adults when Dominic ran ahead to Heaven-but so many grieving parents want to know: Should I let my younger children see me cry?
How much is too much for them to witness, process and hear?
Do I need to shield them from the awful truth of how much this hurts? CAN I shield them?
It depends.
Read the rest here: Should I Let My Young Children See Me Cry?
So much of this battle has been fought in my mind.
Really, even more than in my heart.
Because you can’t argue with sad or shock or missing or disappointment.
But you can absolutely argue with hopelessness (there is nothing to live for), apathy (there is nothing to do) and distrust (there is no one who can help me).
Read the rest here: Thoughts Matter
I remember thinking in the first days and weeks after Dominic’s accident that the world really needed to just STOP!
Sunrise, sunset, sunrise again felt like an abomination when my son was never coming home again. Shouldn’t the universe take notice that something was terribly, terribly wrong?
But it didn’t.
So life (even for me and my family) carried on.
Some days lingered like that last bit of honey in the jar-slipping slowly, ever so slowly into nights when my brain betrayed me by replaying all the ifs, whys and should haves as I tried in vain to get some sleep.
Others flew by and I found myself months further into a new year unable to remember how I got there and what I’d done for all that time.
My adult children married, moved, graduated, changed careers, and had their own child (another on the way!).
My mother joined Dominic in Heaven.
I got older.
We’ve celebrated birthdays, anniversaries and holidays.
Daily life isn’t as difficult (most days) as it was in the beginning but my husband’s retirement has forced me to figure things out once again.
I can’t blame it all on the fact we’ve buried a child. I’m pretty sure most couples struggle to find a new normal when one or both give up long term employment for staying home.
Suddenly my little house kingdom has been overtaken by my husband’s love of music in the background (I’m a work in silence kind of gal), his tendency to leave a trail of breadcrumbs (paper, gum wrappers, tools) wherever he goes and a completely different wake/sleep/work cycle than my own.
I have a plan for the next day the night before. He treats every morning as a blank slate and takes a few hours to decide what he will do. By the time he gets going, I’ve nearly finished my list.
Trying hard to accommodate these changes has laid bare one of the main ways I’ve managed my grief for almost eight years.
I can’t make time stop but I work hard to control it. I schedule and plan and execute the plan in an attempt to reorder life so I don’t feel as vulnerable to its vagaries.
It’s a vain attempt.
My husband’s sense of time is challenging my coping mechanism. Once again I need to figure out how to navigate a changing world, how to carry grief and carry on.
I’m working on it.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
❤
I first shared this post four (!) years ago when I was approaching the four year milestone of Dominic’s leaving for Heaven.
By that time most folks who knew me when he died had relegated that part of my story to some ancient past that surely I was over by now. I’d met others who had no clue my heart skipped a beat on a regular basis because one of my children was buried in the churchyard down the road.
And even the closest ones-the ones I thought would understand forever-were sometimes impatient with my ongoing refusal to leave Dominic behind and be “healed” of my grief.
What I long for more than anything as the eighth anniversary of his departure draws near is simply this: Let me be me, whatever that looks like.
Don’t try to fit my journey into your mold.
❤ Melanie
Even in the very first hours after the news, my brain began instructing my heart, “Now, try to be brave. Try not to disappoint people. Try to say the right thing, do the right thing and be the example you should be.”
Whatever that meant.
Read the rest here: Can I Just Be Me?
It’s something I hear often from bereaved parents-sleep is elusive.
Falling asleep was nearly impossible in the first days and weeks after Dominic’s accident. I would lie down utterly exhausted but simply not be able to close my eyes because behind the lids scrolled the awful truth that my son was never coming home again.
Eventually my body overcame my mind and I would drift off for an hour or two but couldn’t stay asleep.
It was years before I finally developed something that resembled a “normal” sleep pattern. Even now I wake at four practically every morning-the time when the deputy’s knock sounded on my door.
Sleep is important. I can’t do the work grief requires if I go too long without it.
I have used (and still use!) various tips and tricks to help me fall asleep and stay asleep. Here are a few of them.
❤
Boy, do I envy my cats’ ability to fall asleep any place, any time.
I’ve lived with chronic physical pain for over a decade and there are nights when it is hard to go to sleep-when it is impossible to ignore the pain. But I have never thought of myself as having trouble sleeping.
Until now.
Read the rest here: grief and sleep
There’s a common bit of advice in grief circles: Fake it until you make it.
It’s not bad as far as it goes and can be pretty useful-especially just after the initial loss and activity surrounding it.
Like when I met the acquaintance in the grocery store a month after burying Dominic and she grabbed me with a giant smile on her face, “How ARE you?!!! It’s SO good to see you out!!!”
I just smiled and stood there as if I appreciated her interest, a deer caught in headlights, silently praying she’d live up to her talkative past and soon move on to another target.
Faked it.
Boom!
BUT there comes a time when faking it is not helpful. In fact, it’s downright dangerous.
Read the rest here: Can’t Fake It Forever
As a people-pleasing first born who hates conflict, giving in has always been easy for me. It’s only later that I wish I hadn’t.
So for most of my life, setting personal boundaries has been challenging.
But in the aftermath of child loss, healthy boundaries are no longer optional, they are necessary for survival.
So what are healthy boundaries?
Read the rest here: Healthy Boundaries in Grief
I know that when I first stumbled onto a bereaved parent group, it was one of the things I was looking for: evidence that the overwhelming pain of child loss would not last forever.
Some days I was encouraged as those who had traveled farther down this path posted comments affirming that they could feel something other than sorrow.
Some days I was devastated to read comments from parents who buried a child decades ago asserting that “it never gets better”.
Who is right?
What’s the difference?
Do I have any control over whether or not this burden gets lighter?
Read the rest here: Will It Ever Get Better?
Since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, I find I need even more alone time than before.
That quiet place is where I do my most effective grief work, undisturbed by interruptions and distractions.
But I need to be careful that solitude doesn’t shift into isolation.
Read the rest here: Solitude or Isolation? Which is it?
thelifeididntchoose 