Something you hear early on in this grief journey is that one day you will find a “new normal”.
I hate that phrase.
Because while I have certainly developed new routines, new ways of dealing with life, new methods for quelling the tears and the longing and the sorrow and the pain-it is NOT normal.
It will never be “normal” for my son to be missing.
Read the rest here: Nothing “Normal” About It
I want to say up front that I am no theologian.
I am, instead, a sincere follower of the Lord Jesus Christ who reads the Bible and tries hard to understand what it says and let it inform my worldview.
I know I’ve written about this before but it comes up again and again in bereaved parent groups so I’m sharing MY perspective one more time.
Here’s the question:
If God is sovereign (meaning all powerful) then why didn’t He save my child?
Here’s my answer:
God is sovereign. There is no one more powerful in the universe. He can and sometimes, does, interject directly in the affairs of men. If He chose, we would be like automatons, simply doing precisely what He wanted us to do.
God has given man free will. And that means that while there is a perfect plan and will of God for my life, for your life and for every life on this planet, I can choose not to follow it. He will not force me into compliance. I will often make foolish or sinful choices and may very well suffer the consequences.
The world is tainted by sin. Our bodies are prone to sickness, disease, genetic abnormalities. People make not only foolish choices but sinful ones-acting evilly against another person-causing harm and death. Until the devil has been utterly cast out, we will continue to suffer in a world that is not at all as God originally intended it to be.
God has also set certain universal principles in place. Gravity. Physics. Biology. Each operates without His direct intervention according to the laws He created to give us a world that works in predictable fashion. We have electricity in our homes because of these laws. Internal combustion engines work a certain way, over and over and over. When I get sick, my body temperature rises in an attempt to create a hostile environment for the invading bacteria or virus. I depend on these laws every single day.
In my son’s case, he made a foolish choice to drive too fast in a curve. His motorcycle left the road (physics) and he could not maintain control nor stop it before he hit something. His body could not sustain the blow (biology) and he died.
So many times people ascribe the word “miraculous” to someone who survives a nasty accident or is healed from disease. It may be that God in His mercy DID miraculously deliver one person or another. But it may be just as likely that the same laws of physics and biology (things we do not completely understand) which doomed my son, guaranteed their survival. I cannot compare my life to theirs or my son’s accident to another.
COULD God have intervened? Absolutely! Did He? No.
But can I ask Him to step in and prevent these natural consequences when I would be very upset should He do it other times?
See, I want God to stop pain in MY life. But (if I’m honest) I’d rather He allow it in the lives of others (those who molest children, for instance). I want Him to reach down into this world He made and keep ME and MINE safe.
If He was reaching down all the time, this wouldn’t be the world I know, it would be a world where He was chess master and we were all pawns on the game board.
The God I serve invites me to follow Him.
He does not force me to make that choice.
It’s an uncomfortable mystery that I do not understand. But I am satisfied that one day it won’t even matter.
Because every question I have will melt away in the overwhelming joy of Heaven.
Rocking babies I never dreamed that one day my life would look like this.
I never imagined that one of those tiny bodies I held close to my mama heart would not outlive me.
Now I sit in the same rocking chair in the dark, thinking about how so many things I wouldn’t have written into my story are now part of it.
And if I’m honest, it can easily overwhelm my heart. It can carry me to a place of despair and desperation where there’s no room for thanksgiving-not the holiday OR the feeling.
Here we are-the [eleventh] year of holidays without Dominic-and I’m no better at it than I was at first.
Oh, I’ve figured out how to make my way through the day. I can lay out the plates, fill the pantry and put on a spread. I am not nearly as prone to tears as I once was-at least not while folks are watching.
But that easy flow of laughter and near chaos that once marked our gatherings has been replaced by a kind of mechanical plodding that moves from one moment to the next until the day has passed and I’ve survived once again.
I always expected our family to grow larger. I looked forward to the day we would no longer fit around the dining room table and we’d have to figure it out. Spouses and then grandchildren peopled my imagination with such clarity! While I never saw faces, I could hear the laughter and watch the motion of so. many. new. lives filling my home.
This year is especially strange.
Circumstances and work schedules and distance dictate that Thanksgiving will be spent with most of my family far away from my table.
So there won’t be just one empty chair today, there will be several.
And if I stare too long or focus too closely on what I don’t have, I can forget what I still possess.
It’s a temptation-always.
But temptation can be resisted. I am not doomed to follow that train of thought to the bottom of the pit of despair.
I refuse to let the darkness overwhelm the light.
I will be thankful for all the love this house has known, still knows and will know. I will be grateful that even though we are physically distant, we talk to one another, sharing laughter across the miles. I will cherish the moments I had with Dominic and rest in the knowledge that in eternity we will have so many more.
I can’t fill that chair-no one can fill that chair except my son-but I can fill my heart with good things.
I can choose thankfulness even when it’s hard.
Maybe that’s what Thanksgiving is really about-not an unending list of all the sweet things in life-but a short list of beauty extracted from the hard places.
Thanksgiving isn’t always bounty, sometimes it’s sacrifice.
❤
I pull out the memories like treasures from a locked strongbox.
“Handle With Care” because they are all I have left.
But they are not enough.
They will never be enough to satisfy this mama’s heart.
We are supposed to have to remember our elders, our grandparents, even, maybe our spouse at some point-but not our children.
I knew my son from before he made his entrance into the wide world. He had already danced his way into my heart before he took his first step on solid ground. He was part of me from the moment of conception.
I waited breathlessly to see his face for the first time.
I never expected that I would also see it for a last time.
We all have people we expect to outlive-our grandparents, our parents, elderly friends and neighbors-but not our child.
As our loved ones age, the wise among us begin to catalog and carefully store all those “lasts” or soon-to-be “lasts”. We ask for stories to make sure we can keep telling them. We take extra photographs, make extra phone calls and write down recipes.
I was living life forward with Dominic-just like all my kids. We were a busy, busy family and I was never very good at scrapbooking or saving up the ordinary flotsam of everyday life.
So while I have some pictures, memorabilia and tokens of his too-short life, I don’t have nearly enough. Oh, how I wish I had more! Not to create a museum or a shrine but to help my poor brain remember.
When someone says, “Just think of the good memories” it triggers all kinds of emotions and not one of them is what the person intends when giving me that advice.
I feel guilty-guilty for all the things I CAN’T remember.
Dominic is my third child and only 19 months older than his younger brother. There are so many gaps from those early years because I was overwhelmed and tired. Why can’t I conjure up images of him at 3 or 4?
That hurts.
I feel incredibly sad-sad that whatever memories I DO have are all I will ever have. I had the memories BEFORE my son wasn’t walking with me and had planned on making many more.
So focusing on memories brings little solace.
Even at 4 1/2 years into this journey, I’m torn when I pull out the memories.
I can smile now about many of them, but it’s always bittersweet.
Because this treasure trove is as large as it will ever be. ❤
It’s funny what can make my heart race and my eyes fill with tears.
Sometimes it’s obvious- I hear of another son killed in a motorcycle accident.
But sometimes it’s obscure- like when I see someone using a legal pad to take notes.
Either way, triggers take me back to ground zero. They rivet my mind’s attention and my heart’s focus to the very moment I first learned Dominic had left us.
Triggers can happen anywhere, any time. They are often unpredictable and surprising.
And there is not one. single. thing. I can do about them.
Even six plus years into this journey and I am as vulnerable today as I’ve ever been.
I try to limit my exposure. I try to have an escape route. I try to suck up the tears and stifle the sobs.
But sometimes no matter how hard I try, I’m overwhelmed and undone.
There’s part of me that wishes I could just move on and rejoin life and the human race calm and collected, regardless of what memories a sight, sound or smell taps into.
And then there’s part of me that wants the world to sit up and take notice of the ongoing pain and toll child loss inflicts on a parent’s heart.
I’ll be honest, as I’m writing this I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that one of my children is dead.
Oh sure, I can relate the series of events, but in my heart of hearts it is as shocking today that Dominic isn’t coming home as it was on April 12, 2014.
I really can’t adequately convey the ongoing sense that this must be a mistake. There must be something someone has overlooked. Maybe it was all a dream and he will come walking through the door.
I’m not crazy.
I know that Dominic is dead. I saw his body in the casket. I saw the casket lowered into the ground. I visit his grave to change out the flowers.
But I will never, ever get used to it.
All it takes is a smell or a sound or any one of a thousand things that I associate with my third child and I’m transported to that awful morning.
So if you see me tear up, shut down or turn away- let me go.
I just need a few minutes to put my game face back on.
Every spring and every fall we dutifully make the rounds to our clocks and digital devices, putting them first forward an hour and then back in an attempt to make the days “longer”.
As if time was in our hands.
The sun rises and sets according to the Creator’s schedule, we can neither speed the world’s turning, nor slow it down.
We can only choose whether to be present in the moments He grants us.
Read the rest here: Time Change
When I was a little girl, I struggled mightily being afraid of the dark.
Sometimes I could barely close my eyes because I was scared something terrible would happen between going to sleep and waking up.
I outgrew that as I grew into my faith.
But after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, I found myself again afraid to go to sleep.
Not because of “monsters” hiding beneath the bed but because it was between sleep and wake that he left.
I fell asleep with four living children and woke up with three.
I’m still not so good at falling asleep or staying asleep-just another change child loss has wrought in my life. Most nights I have to talk myself into it.
I recite truth to my spirit, sing songs to my soul.
I remind my heart that God was with me and was with Dominic the night he was killed.
He was with me the morning I got the news and Dominic is with Him forever in Heaven.
I’ve learned that leaning into Him, I can find rest and wake to a new day, confident that whatever the sunrise brings, I am not alone.
Some of us only felt tiny hands and feet pressing against the inside of our body.
Some of us saw first steps or first grade.
Some of us watched our child drive away to college certain it was the beginning of an adventure, not the beginning of the end.
Some of us have grandchildren reflecting back a smile or gesture or tone of voice that it so much like the one we miss.
All of us know what it is to lose more than any heart can bear-and yet we DO bear it-every. single. day.
None of us would give up whatever time we had even knowing how hard it is to go on without them. ❤
It’s a lesson you never forget once you’ve learned it.
It’s lesson you never learn unless you have to.
The destruction of property-even every single thing you own on this earth-is awful, frightening and life-changing.
But it’s still LIFE.
My parents were caught in the fury that was Hurricane Michael. They were miles inland, a community that had never seen anything like this in four generations that had lived in the house where they rode out the storm.
Their property and home took a hit, but they are OK.
And for this mama with one son in heaven and one deployed half-way around the world, that’s ALL THAT MATTERS.
We can rebuild a house. We can buy more stuff.
But I can’t replace the people I love.
Life and Death.
I know that lesson well.
Dominic’s death has made me angry at times.
And I really don’t have anyone on whom to focus that anger.
I can blame Dom, but what will that do for my heart?
I can be angry at God, but the truth is, I have too long a history with Him to think that He is punishing me or that He isn’t the loving Father I know Him to be.
So often I end up casting blame on those who don’t live up to my standards of how they SHOULD be walking alongside me in this Valley.
Because all that anger has to go somewhere, right?
Sad thing is, right when I need friends most, if I’m spending my time picking them apart because they aren’t approaching me in the most helpful ways or, worse-avoiding me altogether-then I am guaranteeing I’ll be alone and lonely.
It does hurt when folks say the wrong thing, don’t say anything or let mention of my missing son fall like a lead ball between us.
But most often it isn’t because they MEAN to hurt me, it’s because they don’t know what to say or how to act.
Child loss and its lifelong aftermath is largely a secret in Western society.
Even many mental health professionals don’t recognize its ongoing impact on a heart and life.
I’m beginning to suspect that most of the people I know have been and are doing the best they can to walk alongside me in this Valley. And, well, if it looks a little awkward or is kind of an on again/off again thing-I’ll give grace.
Blaming is easy.
But it pushes hearts apart.
Right when I need them to come closer.
thelifeididntchoose 