I am much, much better than I was the first two years after Dominic ran ahead to heaven.
I’ll be honest though, sometimes all it takes is the tiniest trigger to make my heart race, my hands shake and my eyes well with tears.
It still surprises and frightens me that anxiety is so close to the surface.
But I guess when your world has been shattered violently and utterly by what you never imagined would happen, that’s a reasonable response.
Read here Why Anxiety is Part of Child Loss.
Believe me, I’ve imposed my share of“Quiet Mouse” on my own kids through the years.
Raising four close-in-age siblings, sometimes that was the only way to make the last five miles home without losing my mind.
But the premise of the game is really this: I’m bigger, I’m stronger, I’m in control and you are not-so shut up.
Even if you have something important to say.
Even if you feel like you will burst wide open if you have to hold it in.
No excuses allowed. Just. Be. Quiet.
I’ve been a quiet mouse for most of my life when it comes to standing up for myself.
Now, advocating for my children or for someone unable to fend for themselves-that’s another story. But somewhere in my formative years I embraced the message that the most important thing in the world was to keep the peace.
Even if you have something important to say.
Even if you feel like you will burst wide open if you have to hold it in.
No excuses allowed. Just. Be. Quiet.
But all this emotional turmoil I’ve been feeling since Dominic left us has uncovered layer after layer of brokenness, pain and untold stories. His death lifted the lid on the vault that had been sealed for decades.
Emotions are flying out like genies.
And I’ve come to understand that peace at all costs-when the costs are borne by a single individual in a relationship-is not peace.
It’s slavery.
I also realize that not every friendship and family tie is a mission field on which I must spill my life’s blood to prove my love for Jesus.
Sometimes laying down simply enables bad behavior and encourages bullying and disrespect.
I want to walk in love. Always.
But love does not mean I must allow other people to walk all over me.
I don’t plan to.
No more “Quiet Mouse” for me.
My front yard is full of juvenile squirrels. They love to chase one another round and round-playing some version of “king of the hill”.
I’m used to hearing their chatter and seeing them jump from branch to branch, tree to tree.
But yesterday I saw something I’d never seen before-two young squirrels were clinging desperately to the phone lines that stretch between two power line poles. They were twisting and turning, grasping for a foothold and completely flabbergasted to find themselves in such a precarious position.
I looked to see how in the world they might have ended up there. Sure enough, there is a crepe myrtle tree with branches that just graze the phone lines.
I’m pretty sure the silly young things were chasing each other and didn’t realize that they had jumped from the safety of a tree to the danger of the phone line.
As I was watching them I thought about how I can find myself in a very similar situation.
Grief is not a single emotion-it’s a whole suitcase of them! I can’t help feeling them. In fact, I NEED to feel them if I’m going to do the work grief requires.
But if I allow myself to be led by my emotions, I can quickly be drawn away from the safety of truth and find myself perched precariously on the high wire of my feelings.
Once there, my sole focus becomes maintaining my balance and I lose sight of where I want to go.
In my scramble to keep my footing, I can sacrifice relationships.
I can take offense when none was intended.
I give offense because I’m angry and wounded myself.
I can allow sorrow to cloud my vision so that I can’t see the real beauty that still remains.
I need to remain aware of where my emotions are leading me so that I don’t end up somewhere I don’t want to be.
I’m not nearly as nimble as a squirrel. 🙂
I hesitated to post this but plunged ahead for two reasons:
- I want my friends to know that I welcome the opportunity to pray for them and their children-my heart longs to join in petition for the life of another mother’s child.
- But it still hurts to hear too much detail about some things-you have no idea how well my imagination can fill in the gaps in stories of twisted metal and almost death.
So here it is. I hope you receive it as it’s intended. ❤
Dear Mom Whose Son Survived the Accident,
I want you to know that I am beyond thankful that you will be spared my pain. I prayed for your son as you requested-begged God to spare him.
They say misery love company but I say misery loves comfort.
I do not want one more parent to know the heartache of child loss.
Given the chance, I would not hesitate a moment to answer the Miss America question: “If you could do one thing in the world to make it a better place, what would it be?”
“I would make sure no parent ever had to bury a child.”
Not from disease.
Not from starvation.
Not from war or natural disaster or accidents.
No more out of order deaths!
Every parent would go to his grave assured his son or daughter would continue to carry the family legacy.
But that’s not possible. So I rejoiced extra hard when YOUR son had that awful accident, yet lived.
You get to visit him in the hospital, take him home with medicine and physical therapy. I met my son in the funeral home and could only choose a casket for his final resting place.
You will have this holiday season tempered by the shadow of what might have happened, but rejoicing in a second chance to make new memories.
This will be my fourth set of holidays without my son-without his presence at the table, his face around the Christmas tree, his stocking limp and empty because there’s nothing left for me to give him.
You were impatient when I asked you to respect how difficult it is for me to hear the details of your son’s accident. Even in my joy that you will be spared my fate, it hurts to hear how close you came. You were offended and that really hurt my heart.
I didn’t contact you; you contacted me.
I didn’t ask you to pray for me, you asked me to pray for you.
And I did.
And I will.
Because even if you are insensitive, ungrateful and inconsiderate, I will ask God to continue to protect your son-that’s what a broken heart does.
It begs for mercy.
Love,
A Broken Hearted Mama ❤
I’ve written before about anxiety and child loss here. No matter the cause of death, the FACT of a child’s death seems to create the perfect conditions for a parent’s body and mind to experience anxiety, dis-ease, fear and often a sense of impending doom.
My world was rocked to its foundation the moment I heard the words, “He was killed in a motorcycle accident”.
The worst thing I could imagine had come true.
There was no protection from it happening again, no guarantee that THIS unbearable pain would be the ONLY unbearable pain I would have to carry.
I think my body chemistry was instantly transformed that morning to include rapid heartbeats, shallow breathing and a horrible creepy tension that climbs my spine and clenches its claws tightly at the base of my skull.
Before Dominic left us for Heaven I was not an anxious person.
No matter what happened, I generally took it in stride, looked for a solution and moved forward armed with an arsenal of choices to meet the problem head on.
Now, I can be pushed into a corner by an ordinary phone call that lasts too long. I can feel trapped if a price fails to ring up properly and I have to wait to have it corrected by a head cashier. I can become positively frantic when I reach in my purse and can’t find my keys even though I know for a fact I put them there and if I look a bit harder I’ll find them.
Traffic makes my heart go pitter-patter. The doorbell sends me flying to make sure it’s the UPS man and not another police officer to tell me heartbreaking news.
If I try to multi-task (which I rarely do) I am soon overwhelmed and have to sit down to catch my breath.
I only shop in stores where I’m familiar with the aisles and where products I need are shelved.
I check and re-check directions if I have to go to an unfamiliar address and leave with double the time needed to get there in case I get lost. Making on-the-fly course corrections doesn’t happen.
I pull off and have to figure out where I am.
And heaven forbid the phone rings past midnight -I wake with a start and even a wrong number means I won’t sleep for the rest of the night.
This is not “worry”. It’s not “borrowing trouble from tomorrow”. It is not an indication that my faith is weak or I’m “caving in” to my feelings.
It’s an uncontrollable physiological response to various stimuli.
So please, please don’t judge me or other bereaved parents for making choices about where we go, when we go and how much we go-most of the time we are anticipating an anxious response and trying to beat it.
We are doing the best we can.
Honest.
Today my husband and I celebrate 33 years of marriage.
Our thirtieth anniversary was a mere two months after we buried our son.
Here’s the last “before” anniversary photo (2013)-unfeigned smiles, genuine joy, excitement to have made it that far:
This is us on our thirtieth anniversary, at our oldest son’s wedding -holding one another up as best we could:
This is us last Christmas:
We are definitely the worse for wear, but we are still here.
Together.
There are a lot of myths floating around about what happens to a marriage on the other side of child loss. The one tossed out most often cites a “study” reporting 90 percent of marriages fail after the death of a child.
It’s just not true.
But the danger is that if you believe it is true, you may stop trying. You may stop reaching out across the painful abyss that threatens to keep you apart forever. You may decide that living alone with your broken heart is better than living alongside someone who may be broken in very different ways than you are.
It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The truth is that child loss is no more likely to destroy a marriage than a list of other terrible life events-even though child loss is the most terrible.
A child’s death shakes a marriage to its foundations and reveals the weak spots. And EVERY marriage has weak spots.
So the challenge in this season of marriage-like every season of marriage-is to turn toward one another instead of away. Choose to do the work necessary to make it:
It takes energy and commitment right when we don’t have any to spare. But at least in this, we have a choice.
I have already lost so much over which I had no control.
I will fight for what I CAN hold onto as hard as I know how.
I wasn’t born with an “I don’t give a hoot” gene.
When I commit to a person, a project or a problem, I’m all in-no holding back.
That’s why this side of Dominic’s leaving I’ve been very cautious about making commitments. But in the past year I’ve begun branching out and joining in again.
In many ways it has been a positive experience.
In other ways, not so much.
Last evening was one of those times.
Some critical tasks are undone for a large project where deadlines are fast approaching. They are not my assigned tasks although I could perform them if I had the time and/or energy.
But I just don’t have either one.
So there is friction and panic and rush in the group that didn’t need to be there. I won’t withdraw-I’m committed to fulfill my responsibilities but now I am burdened with all this negative emotional energy.
It followed me home and try as I might I was unable to regather my peace of mind.
I had spent all the emotional reserve I had for yesterday on keeping my responses controlled and relatively kind when people were trying to foist extra responsibilities on me as we walked out the door.
By the time I went to bed I was emotionally bankrupt.
The little bit of extra I depend on each night to keep my mind and heart focused on positive things as I drift off to sleep was spent.
I had nothing left.
I got to the edge of sleep over and over and the thought, “Dominic is dead.” flashed like lightning through my mind. The thought brought horrible feelings with it. I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried.
Eventually, exhausted, I fell asleep. It was an awful sleep. I woke up many times to the same thought all night long. I will suffer for it today-sluggish and unable to concentrate.
THIS is why I can’t afford to get involved like I used to before Dominic ran ahead to heaven-not because I don’t care or I don’t want to-but because I CAN’T.
I cannot spend the same emotional energy twice.
I’ve only got so much to give.
thelifeididntchoose 