I’ve struggled since the beginning of this journey to convey others the ongoing open-ended emptiness of burying a child.
There is simply no way to fill the void left by my son’s leaving.
No job, no hobby, no ministry, no person, no exercise regimen, dietary discipline or medical intervention can fix this pain.
So when people think I will
“get over”,
or
“move past”
my son’s death,
they profoundly misunderstand my experience.
We live in an angry society.
Social media is full of rants about this and that. Television blares raised voices shouting over one another in what passes for news coverage. T-shirts are emblazoned with one-liners intended to provoke others.
We tolerate and even embrace anger as a legitimate emotion.
Yet we rarely make room for mourning. We hide our tears. We shame those who don’t hide theirs as “weak” and “soft” and “cowardly” or worse.
But many times what we think is anger, is really sadness.
I’ve discovered that sometimes in this Valley of the Shadow of Death, deep sorrow masquerades as anger. And I’ve become sensitive to that truth in other people as well.
Sadness over loss of any kind can be spewed out as anger:
Sorrow over declining health.
Despair over lost opportunities with loved ones.
Heartache that life has not turned out the way one had hoped.
The problem with anger is that it pushes people away. It creates an impenetrable circle that isolates a heart just when it needs to be loved, cared for and comforted.
Very few are brave enough to battle through another’s angry front to find the sorrow hidden underneath.
So I challenge myself to be more authentic in expressing what I actually feel and not dig a moat around my heart by acting angry when I’m really devastated by grief.
Because I don’t want to push people away, I want them to come close.
I need them to take my hand and remind me that I’m not alone.
So my regular followers know by now my mom was lifeflighted over a week ago from her VERY rural home to the nearest large hospital due to a heart attack and complications from preexisting heart/lung disease. (If you didn’t, you do now 🙂 )
I’ve been here with her since Thursday morning-taking night shift at the hospital so my dad can go home to the farm, get some rest and do what needs to be done.
You’d think a body might catch a break when some giant life-altering event like this happens. But NOOOOOOO!
In the week plus a day since Mama has been hospitalized we have had (not really, but sorta) funny one [#unblessed] moment after another.
Last Friday morning, following my dad to the hospital, he did the same sliding “stop” at a stop sign turning right onto an access road that he’s done every time he goes this way for 20 years. But this time-you guessed it!– a very enthusiastic and attentive LEO saw him and pulled his old red farm truck over.
Following behind, I’ll just be honest, more than one salty word slipped out as I anticipated the worst possible outcome in case fatigue and stress prompted Papa to tell the officer what’s what. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that and after running the plates and license the cop let him go. [#unblessed]
Sunday I came to the farm by myself for the first time and left Papa at the hospital. He had remembered to give me a house key and I had carefully put it in my purse.
Perfect.
Got inside-no problem.
I needed to add clothes to a load in the washer and stepped out on the porch to toss them in. Being the well-trained daughter I am, I shut the house door behind me. Locked myself out of the house.
No phone.
No shoes.
No car keys.
NOTHING.
Everyone down this way was in church.
So I did the only thing I could do. I put on an old pair of Papa’s boat shoes (after checking for spiders) and hoofed it the two miles to my uncle’s house so he could give me the spare key. At midday. In the Florida sun. No one stopped to ask if I needed a ride. [#unblessed]
Tuesday I thought I was being very innovative in getting my critical daily medicine prescriptions filled at the local pharmacy HERE since I didn’t bring a sufficient supply from home. Called CVS and it was a breeze except for one hiccup. A single script was out of refills so I had to call my doctor and ask for an emergency 14 day supply to be sent. Nurse took the message, said she’d get it done. That was at 11:15. I head to the pharmacy about 3:00 to pick everything up. Two are ready but the one from the doctor isn’t.
Thinking that there had been a snafu-they might have called it in without thinking to my pharmacy back home-I telephone the office only to be told that the doctor was going to do it this time, but that because he wanted me to do a follow-up appointment (which I had cancelled but forgot to reschedule), he was basically doing it under duress. (Even though this is a “don’t you dare stop it suddenly” medicine and I told the nurse my mom was lifeflighted to the hospital with a heart attack).
All the fight was out of me. I “yes ma’amed” my way through that phone call and said “thank you so much”. The nurse waited until the minute before their office closed to fax the script just because she could. [#unblessed]
They are trying to move the fluid off my mom’s heart and lungs with aggressive IV diuretics. She had one round Tuesday but by Wednesday morning her potassium was so low we had to bring that back up before the next round. Well, the next round started at 6:30 Wednesday night. (For those of you who don’t know about these things, IV diuretics mean trips to the bathroom about every 20-30 minutes.) Yep! All night long, me and Mama made that three foot trek from the bed to the potty-unhooking oxygen, unplugging the IV pole (it won’t hold a battery charge) and carefully moving her fragile self twice an hour until about 3:30 in the morning. Apparently cardiologists figure that if they are on 24 hour call, patients should be too. [#unblessed]
Heading home Thursday morning after little sleep on Wednesday night, I see blue lights behind me. I check my speed. Within the limit. I’m talking on the cell but not texting. I have no idea why I’m being pulled over.
License and registration. He tells me that the tag I have on my truck comes back to the Toyota Camry we own.
Now, you have to understand our family has many vehicles and they issued new tags this year. I didn’t pay close enough attention when taking them outside to put them on and got them mixed up. But “switching” tags is a serious offense. And then, OF COURSE, I had not put the new insurance card in the glove compartment-it was floating in my purse. (Thankfully I found it.) For about 10 minutes my heart was racing although I had already decided that if I got off with a ticket I’d pay it without blinking an eye. He did let me go but I’m convinced he thought I was a crazy woman who should have known better [#unblessed]
Today, I tried to get my injectable RA medicine shipped to the same pharmacy since my shot is due tomorrow. Went through the whole routine of getting the shipment set up and find out the earliest they can get it here is NEXT Thursday. When I probably won’t be here at all. [#unblessed]
I’m sitting here in my parents’ home, typing and taking a break. Because my oldest son may be here tomorrow. See, the largest, strongest and potentially deadliest hurricane is headed either for his home on the east side of Florida or for us here in the western panhandle-but we are further inland. My truck is stocked with bottled water and other supplies “just in case”. We don’t know if Mama will be released before Irma gets here or not but we’ll be OK. Who would have thought? It figures. [#unblessed]
Each incident adds stress to the system but none are really all that traumatic.
Because when you’ve buried a child, nothing short of death really rocks your world very much.
And I’ve learned to laugh (once the adrenaline wears off)-because if I don’t, I’ll just cry.
When news that Dominic left us spread, our yard was filled with friends and family here to help bear the burden of grief and loss.
Our house was bursting with people and food and phone calls-more coming and going than our gravel lane had seen in a lifetime of living up in the woods.
It was beautiful and terrible all at the same time.
Read the rest here: No. It’s a Complete Sentence.
There are two ways to deal with the scars pain leaves behind: try to cover them up or display them boldly.
Hiding seems the easier way so many times-because the scars are tender and the last thing I want is to invite more pain. But it takes great effort and is rarely successful.
The edges peek out here and there and then I’m left awkwardly trying to explain how I got them and what they mean.
If I refuse to hide my scars and instead lay them open to the world, I am vulnerable, true. But I am also in a position to help others who are suffering the same pain that etched those scars in my heart.
So I choose not to hide.
I choose to be a lighthouse.
Not because I think I can steer others clear of the rocks of loss and sorrow, but because I want them to know they are not alone.
Labels and categories can be helpful. When cruising the grocery aisles I’m thankful for the signs that point the way to “vegetables” or “baking needs”.
But labels can be harmful when applied to people.
Read the rest here: Strong or Weak? How Labels Harm the Hurting
I hate mirrors. Not because I’m ashamed of my wrinkles or my fat hips. But because the face staring back at me now is not one I recognize.
I see someone who’s supposed to be me and can’t quite place her.
There’s a vague resemblance to the person that used to look me in the eye while I was brushing my teeth or fixing my hair.
But now, she is “other”, unfamiliar, strange in a “slightly off” kind of way.
I often laugh and smile but I’m rarely in front of a reflective surface when giggles animate my face and redraw it in the old, familiar outline.
My resting face looks old and sad and tired.
The eyes that used to be clear are clouded. The mouth that more often than not was turned up in at least a hint of a smile is, at best, a straight line and, at worst, a frown. Deep lines show that I spend most of my days squinting, as if I’m searching the distant horizon for a glimpse of something that SHOULD be there but is just out of sight.
I can’t erase what grief has etched in flesh.
So I try not to look.
I’m driving down the highway listening to the morning news brief. A quick mention that Paris is likely to get the bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics draws my attention.
I begin to do the math-when are the next Olympics? Oh, yes-2020. Three years away.
Double the time I’ve been without Dominic.
How old will I be in 2024? Sixty-one! How many years will it be THEN since I last held my son’s hand, hugged his neck, heard his voice?
This happens in a flash. My heart goes from “just fine” to “I can’t believe this is my life” in sixty seconds.
But I can’t stay here. If I do the day will be shot. I won’t accomplish a thing because despair will drag me under and only a good night’s sleep will have hope of restoring me.
So I don’t. I grab those thoughts and wrestle them to the ground. I pin them with the truth that no matter how many years it is between when I last saw Dominic and when I join him in Heaven they will be short and swift in light of eternity.
I take comfort in accepting that my vantage point is limited to my handful of experiences in this life and to what I can see with my own eyes. But God sees the whole sweep of eternity, from beginning to end. I have found Him to be a relentlessly good and loving God. Because of my confidence in His character, I can rest in knowing that someday, someday, Katie’s [Dominic’s] short life and premature death will make sense to me. Someday God will scoop me, too, into His arms, and I will step into a world that until that moment I could only sense and never see. I will finally get it. And I will see Him face to face.
And you know who else I will see face-to-face on that day?
I will see Katie [Dominic].
Yes, God is merciful.
~September Vaudrey, Colors of Goodbye
I resist the pressure to give up and push back with the strength that comes from knowing that my opponent is no match for the Champion that fights for me.
I wrote this post 18 months ago after a number of incidents when friends and family members tried to tell me how long to grieve, what my grieving should look like and (most hurtful) how my son would want me to grieve.
I rejected that notion then, and I reject it now.
Most of us have taken a class or two in literature–we read other people’s writing and sit around discussing “what it really means”. My husband has always scoffed at the notion that anyone but the author knows that.
Me–I love books, plays and poetry so I’ve spent a lifetime reading and trying to interpret the meaning of others’ words.
But now I find I’m leaning more toward my husband’s point of view.
One of the challenges I face as a grieving parent is finding that other people want to interpret my experience for me.
Read the rest here: curating grief
I belong to several online bereaved parents’ groups and they are truly a lifeline in so many ways.
I can speak my mind there without fear of rejection or correction or of hurting my non-bereaved friends and family. I learn from other parents farther along in this journey how they cope with birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and every day grief triggers.
Sadly, there are new members added daily. New parents are forced to join this “club” where the dues are higher than anyone would willingly pay.
I am horrified by how quickly the numbers jump week-to-week and month-to-month.
And usually the parent (when they are ready) will share a bit about the child that has run ahead and the circumstances of his or her death. It’s an important part of learning to live with this pain-learning to speak your story.
But when too many of the seasoned parents are silent and my newsfeed explodes with stories of newly bereaved parents, my heart can easily be ovewhelmed by the desperation, sadness and utter despair that swamps a parent’s heart when they first find out their child is not coming home again.
Then the sites turn into echo chambers where sadness calls to sadness, circles back around and calls again. Despair is everywhere and there appears no way forward.
Bitterness weaves a black thread through post after post after post:
No one understands,
everyone has abandoned me,
I am unloved, alone and hopeless.
That’s precisely how I felt in those early months and it is an appropriate response to the awful devastation of out-of-order death.
But if I’m to survive this life I didn’t choose, then I’ve got to also have a healthy dose of hope.
So I limit my exposure to the echo chamber from time to time, especially if I’m feeling weak and vulnerable. I might take a week’s break to let my heart recover a bit and then go back with fresh vigor, ready to participate, encourage others and be encouraged.
Life after child loss is a marathon, not a sprint.
I have to pace myself if I’m going to make it to the finish line.
Sometimes that means taking a break and sitting on the sidelines.
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