My son’s death is a point in time for people outside my immediate grief circle. It’s a date on a calendar. There is a period after his name.
But it is an ongoing experience for me and my family.
We don’t only remember on birthdays, holidays and anniversary days, we can never forget.
Yet often others do.
Read the rest here: I’m Sorry
I have had my share of pain in life-physical, emotional and psychological.
Some of it I’ve brought on myself and some of it has been thrust upon me.
None of it was pleasant.
But by far the most excruciating pain I have endured is the death of my son.
Read the rest here: Transforming Pain
Shattered beyond repair-that certainly describes my broken heart in the first days, weeks and months after Dominic’s leaving.
I felt like Humpty Dumpty.
The pieces were too small to find, much less glue back together in anything resembling wholeness.
And the essence of the “old me”-the person that existed before loss-was spilled onto the ground, leaking strength and life and joy into the dry earth.
Read the rest here: Broken, But Not Beyond Repair
It’s tempting to try to hide our tears and fears from our living children and grandchildren.
Who wants to overload a young heart and mind with grown-up problems?
There is definitely a place and time to shelter little people-it’s never appropriate to offload onto small shoulders what we just don’t want to carry ourselves.
But it is neither helpful nor healthy to pretend that sorrow and sadness don’t follow loss.
Read the rest here: Why It’s So Important to Model Grief For Our Children & Grandchildren
See, here’s the thing: to the outside world, my son’s death happened at a single point in time.
But to me, his death is a continuous event.
I must lift the cup of sorrow every day to parched lips. I must choose to take it to the One Who can help me lift it.
Jesus knows this cup.
He knows my pain: My Cup Overflows
I first shared this four years ago when I was reflecting on half a decade of living without one of my children beside me. I’ve now had nearly another half decade to think about why or IF I’ll continue to write.
Every so often I take a day or two to consider whether I want to keep posting. I have to admit sometimes that I wonder if I bang the same drum for too long it will sound loud and obnoxious to some people’s ears.
But then I get a message or a comment from someone fresh on this journey and they feel seen, heard, validated and safe.
So I write on.
And I find that writing brings clarity and comfort to my soul. I still have things to say and I hope what I say still brings some small measure of light, love, life and hope to other hearts.
❤ Melanie
I was one of those people years ago who set her sights on starting and maintaining a blog.
I thought I would post a few times a week and share anecdotes about my family and critters, insight into daily living and inspiration from Scripture and interesting quotes.
No, not THIS blog-the other two I started and quickly abandoned to who-knows-where in cyberspace.
Trouble was that the subject matter, while near and dear to my heart, wasn’t personally compelling enough to keep me disciplined and actively writing.
If someone had said, “Pick any topic to write about”, child loss wouldn’t have been in the first million choices.
No one CHOOSES child loss (Thus the name of the blog: The Life I Didn’t Choose).
But untold numbers of parents EXPERIENCE it every year. This very day, parents somewhere got a knock on the door or a phone call or sat next to a hospital bed as life slipped slowly from their child’s tired body.
Since I was already journaling and had walked this Valley for nearly a year and a half, it dawned on me that the ramblings I’d put down might be helpful to another heart. So I started THIS blog in September, 2015.
And I’ve been here ever since.
I’m not in the raw, breathless place I once was. But grief and loss are part of every breath I take, part of every moment I experience.
I miss Dominic. I still consider death an enemy. Every day I hate what was stolen and long for what was. I mourn the changes grief has wrought in my family. I wish things were different. I discover new ways loss impacts my life and new ways of coping with it.
So I keep writing.
I don’t want anyone to feel alone in this journey. I don’t want anyone to think there’s no way to survive. I don’t want a single broken heart to doubt that God is here and that He will help you hold onto hope.
I’ll spill my heart out in words until the words are exhausted.
It helps me.
I pray it helps others too.
Last summer, I participated in an online discussion group with others who read ATLAS OF THE HEART* by Brene Brown.
It was a helpful exercise to map, name and explore emotions so that I can create more meaningful connections to myself and others.
I think I’ve been doing some version of this my whole life. Language matters. Being able to give any emotion-especially the deep pain and sorrow of child loss-matters.
Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness….
Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.
Brene Brown, ATLAS OF THE HEART, xxi
The morning Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, after I made the awful phone calls I reached for my journal.
I knew if I didn’t start spilling the grief onto paper my heart would explode with sorrow.
Since I learned to hold a pencil I’ve been writing.
It’s how I sort my thoughts, figure out my feelings and express my heart.
Read the rest here: Give Sorrow Words.
*Warning: ATLAS OF THE HEART contains language that may offend some folks. I just don’t want anyone to be surprised. ❤
I think it was somewhere around two months from Dominic’s departure when my heart realized life was moving forward whether I granted permission or not.
Not only folks on the fringes and the “bigger world out there” but close by-in my own family, my own circle of intimate friends-people were making plans, having birthdays, going places and doing things.
I wanted to scream.
Read the rest here: Child Loss: Finding Courage to Face the Future
I wrote this six years ago but it still speaks my heart.❤
Melanie
I will not get used to the fact that my son is beyond my reach. I have come to a certain acceptance of it as fact, and acknowledgement of the truth that I cannot change that fact.
The pain hasn’t become less painful, only more familiar. It doesn’t surprise me as often when it pricks my heart anew.
The world goes on.
Read the rest here: True Truth
I first shared this this several years ago when I was pondering the FACT that no matter how wonderful the moment, how beautiful the gift, how marvelous the fellowship of family or friends, I am simply unable to feel the same overflowing, unadulteraged joy I once experienced.
I absolutely feel JOY but it’s mixed with pain.
Since then, I’ve been thinking about the great heroes of Scripture and studying their stories in detail.
I may be wrong, but I haven’t found one whose life did not contain pain.
It appears that sorrow and suffering in this world is one of the chief tools God uses to help the hearts of His people long for the world for which we are made-the eternal city whose Builder is God:
It was by faith that Abraham obeyed the summons to go out to a place which he would eventually possess, and he set out in complete ignorance of his destination. It was faith that kept him journeying like a foreigner through the land of promise, with no more home than the tents which he shared with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs with him of the promise. For Abraham’s eyes were looking forward to that city with solid foundations of which God himself is both architect and builder.
Hebrews 11: 8-10 PHILLIPS
Some point to lack of abundant joy as proof of a weak faith.
I counter that obedience, in spite of the lack of abundant joy is proof of rock-solid faith.
Walking on in spite of my empty bucket means that I am trusting God to fill it even when I can’t see how.
Here’s the original post: There’s a Hole in My Bucket
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