I confess-until it was MY son who left for Heaven before me I had NO idea that grief was really just love.
But when the person you love more than the breath in your body leaves you, the love remains.
And you have to find something to do with it.
So you sigh and you moan and you find ways to keep that person relevant despite the days, weeks, months and years (!) of experiences that interpose themselves between the last time you were able to hug his neck and the date on the current calendar.
❤
” If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them.” ~James O’Barr
I grieve because I love.
My tears are a gift to the son I miss. My sorrow honors his memory. My broken heart gives evidence to the ones walking with me that my love is fierce and timeless.
And yet those first hours and days are some of the most vivid in my memory. Who showed up, what they did, what they said (or graciously and wisely DIDN’T say), how fragile and lost I felt as precious friends guided me through so. many. decisions.
I will never, ever forget the kindnesses shown to our family during that time. I will never, ever stop thanking God for the brave souls that entered into our world of pain and simply refused to be shooed or frightened away.
❤ Melanie
The death of any loved one opens a door and forces you to pass through.
You cannot procrastinate, cannot refuse, cannot ignore or pretend it away.
Suddenly, you find yourself where you absolutely do not want to be.
And there is no going back.
Many bereaved parents describe the first hours, the first days after losing a child as a fog–we feel both horrified (I can’t believe this is happening!) and numb (Is this real? Am I dreaming?).
Thou hast given so much to me, Give one thing more, -a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me, As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
George Herbert
“As if Thy blessings had spare days”.
I love that!
I remember as a young mother being overwhelmed by the responsibility and work raising a human soul required. Sometimes I would get frustrated that my family didn’t seem to appreciate the effort.
I thought, “Here I am, day in, day out with no break and you only seem to notice when I can’t always meet every expectation or desire.”
I wonder how often God looks down on me, His child, thinking the same thing?
Of course He is fully CAPABLE of doing anything. He’s not hampered by the frailty of humanity. But in His infinite wisdom He only acts for my ultimate good and His glory.
There is not a single day when God is not blessing me.
Even when Dominic took his last breath, God provided.
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).
We were too busy or we were not busy enough. We spoke harshly when weshould have withheld judgement. We insisted on “good behavior” when our child was simply being curious and doing what all active children do.
The difference between most parents and bereaved parents is this: As long as there is breath, there is hope for forgiveness, for mending fences, for saying, “Hey, remember when” followed by an apology and understanding.
When your child is out of reach there’s no chance of making amends or even having a conversation.
So I’m left alone to work through any regrets I have.
I am forced to play both roles and make assumptions about what Dominic may or may not have understood at the time. I have to hope without confirmation that he would forgive me for the moments when I was less than the mom I wish I had been.
Most days I rest in the truth that no matter what, Dominic knew he was loved.
In fact, I try hard to imagine that even in the last second of his life-before he met Jesus-he may have been focused on my mother love and that if I could have been there I would have been.
But there are cold days and cloudy days and days when I feel oh, so inadequate and all the regrets come knocking at the door of my heart.
Those are hard.
So although I rarely play the “if you only knew” card with friends and family I will say this: Tell the people you love what you need to tell them. Let them hear you say aloud how much they mean to you.
Savor ordinary moments because that’s what life is made of.
Sometimes sadness is sanity. Tears are the reasonable response. Quickness to shush, shame or fix them, can reveal resistance to wisdom.
Zack Eswine
It wasn’t until I suffered the unbearable that I realized how very true this is: Sometimes sadness IS sanity.
Deep grief is the price we pay for great love.
But it’s easy to mosey through most of a life before you’re forced to come face to face with this truth.
Tears are an appropriate and proportional response to loss. Despair is a reasonable reaction to tragic and sudden death. Horror is perfectly understandable when disease ravages the body and steals the soul of someone you love.
So often those who haven’t experienced it want those of us who have to hold the knowledge close like a secret in hopes they won’t have to acknowledge it is true.
But sooner or later death visits all of us.
And when we choose to stand with those who have, through no fault of their own and without giving permission to the universe, been thrust head first into the unrelenting reality of loss, we not only encourage them, we enrich ourselves.
Life is a tenuous and fragile gift.
The quicker we understand and embrace that the wiser and more compassionate we will be.
I remember thinking in the first days and weeks after Dominic’s accident that the world really needed to justSTOP!
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 thenight 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 waysI’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.
Our family had only recently upgraded to smartphones when Dominic left us so we didn’t have the treasure trove of photos and real time videos so many folks have today.
I often wish for more of those but there’s not one thing I can do about it.
Even now I don’t think we record as many family moments as we should-there’s just a subtle whisper, “He’s not here” that plays on repeat in the background when we get together.
Like so many other things after loss, photographs are complicated now.
❤
I remember everything about the first formal family photograph after Dominic died.
It was two months to the day since we buried him, and his older brother was getting married. A day we had planned for and looked forward to for a long time. It marked a new beginning, a new life, but the spectre of death veiled my eyes and whispered in my ears.
Standing there, smiling and holding back the tears, my heart cried,”One of us is missing!” and I wanted to shout, “Don’t take the photo. Don’t memorialize the absence of my son.”
I swallowed the words and have an album full of evidence that he wasn’t there.
I’m not entirely sure this quote is an accurate one from the original Winnie the Pooh books but it is absolutely an accurate reflection of the characters.
And it’s a beautiful reminder to all of us how powerful presence can be.
May we all have Poohs and Piglets that come sit with us when we are Sad, and Alone, and Not Much Fun To Be Around.
