Tag: bereaved parent

So This Is What I Looked Like: It’s Hard Watching Another Heart Grieve

Watching my father grieve my mother is the second hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

Grieving my own son, watching my husband and children grieve him too, is the hardest.

I observe Papa’s expression, hear the weariness in his voice, note the far off stare when conversation drifts to mundane and unimportant things and realize that was exactly how I looked and sounded in the first months after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.

I love my mama.

And I spent a lot of time with her these past two years since the fall and heart attack that changed everything in August, 2017.

But I was not her daily caregiver. My schedule didn’t revolve around whether or not someone could stay with her so I could go somewhere else-even if it was just down the road-for more than an hour.

One of the last photos we took with Mama. She was so proud of her great-grandson.

I called each day and talked to Papa, checking on them both, but then I was free to do or not do whatever I wanted to without considering her need to be attached to oxygen and her limited endurance to do anything even then.

I tried to be supportive. I made multiple trips down to the farm and tried to give Papa some space and freedom.

That’s just not the same as 24/7 care.

His grief for the wife with whom he spent 58 years is deeper and wider than my heart can understand.

Mama and Papa in the early days.

Just as my grief for the child I had carried, birthed, raised and cared for was impossible for him to fully comprehend.

Dominic is his grandson. And as grandparents go, my parents were extremely involved in my kids’ lives-showing up to not only the important events and occasions but also to many mundane and everyday moments.

But the gap between even frequent visits and daily living is huge.

So while I cannot feel precisely what Papa is feeling about Mama-his wife-I can absolutely understand how very devastating his loss is.

Our losses are different in kind but not in quality.

When I look at him, I’m looking in a mirror.

Grief etched everywhere.

Pain across his forehead.

Heartache painted on his lips.

I am so sad that I am no more able to touch that deep wound and render healing than anyone was able to touch mine and do the same.

No one can do the work he has to do but himself-not even someone who has done the same work in her own life.

All I can offer is to walk with him, no matter how hard it gets, for as long as it takes just like he did (does!) for me. ❤

STILL A Mess Some Days…

This post was originally written three years ago. While the details or occasions change, I still find some days I’m a mess.

It’s not nearly as often as it once was and for that I am oh, so grateful.

But the holidays, in particular, seem to make it extra hard to maintain my composure when stress or fatigue are added to missing Dominic.

The other day a conversation about the upcoming holidays devolved into a confrontation.

What I was trying to communicate came out wrong and one thing led to another until I fled- a crying, trembling mess. 

I am trying so hard to manage this life I have left. 

Read the rest here: Some Days, I’m Just a Mess

Managing Expectations: Grief Makes Everything Harder

Trust me, I WANT to do all the things I used to be able to do.

I want to live up to every commitment, be at every event or celebration, make myself available and remain flexible and always say the right thing.

But I can’t.

I couldn’t before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven (although I had more energy to try) and I definitely can’t now.

Often I disappoint myself or those I love and I hate that.

No one can be as upset with me as I am with myself. No one can condemn me with a longer list than the list I keep in my own heart. No one can say anything to me that I haven’t already said to myself.

I have no illusion that I’m perfect. I don’t think I’m even close to perfect.

But I do have high expectations of myself and when I fall short, it’s a hard fall that ends with a THUD! and it takes days to mend.

I need to manage my expectations.

I need to be more realistic about what I can and can’t do.

Grief makes everything harder.

Even after five years.

There’s A Moment When The Light Makes It Through Again

This past week has been both hard and wonderful.

Some things happened that mean the next few months are going to be extra painful, extra stressful and extra challenging.

But I had a grace-filled, heartwarming visit with another bereaved mama who came all the way from Maine just to hang out with me. And that was so, so good.

As she and I shared over coffee and tea, shopping and meals, lounging and walking we found so many ways in which our journeys have been similar even though the details are really very different.

One is this: There was a distinct moment along the way when each of us began to see light and color again in the midst of our darkness and pain and it was a turning point.

When I was forced unwillingly on this long, hard journey, everything was dark. Nothing sparked joy. The whole world became a grainy black and white image on an ancient TV and it was fuzzy, flat and utterly uninteresting.

What’s worse, my heart could only REALLY feel two things-pain and love-and they were so inextricably intertwined I was no longer sure which was which.

I couldn’t run fast enough or far enough to escape the darkness or the pain.

I had to face all the awful of child loss, embrace it, feel it, work through it, talk about it in safe spaces with safe people and sit quietly for hours with my thoughts and uncomfortable emotions. I had to let time do the work that only time can do.

There are no shortcuts on this journey.

And then there was a moment when I saw something beautiful and felt something wonderful and I didn’t have to TELL my heart it was beautiful and wonderful.

I just KNEW and I could FEEL it.

At first, these moments didn’t last long and were isolated. But eventually the moments came faster, lasted longer and were closer together. I learned to embrace them, hold onto them, build upon them and look for them.

Now, the moments of light, life and color make up most of my days.

I have not forgotten Dominic. My heart aches to see him again, hold him again, share life with him again. But I’ve learned to hold that yearning for the life I used to have and gratitude for the life I live now in the same heart. I’ve found that allowing joy to fill my soul doesn’t push him away or to the side as if he doesn’t matter.

So if you think there is no way you can survive this awful, awful journey, keep going.

If you are still in the dark days and fearful light will never penetrate the depth of your pain and despair, hold on.

If your world has gone colorless, don’t give up.

Look for your moment, it’s coming.

And when it does, grab it.

There’s more where that came from.

Holiday Help for Grieving Hearts: Make a Plan

When faced with the upcoming holidays and already rapid heartbeat and fading strength, the last thing a bereaved parent wants to hear is , “Make a plan”.

But the truth is, if you don’t it will be so. much. worse.  

fail to plan plan to fail

No one can tell YOU what the plan should be.  Each family is unique.  Each year brings different challenges-declining health, moves, children or grandchildren born and a dozen other variables that must be accounted for THIS year versus years past.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/11/07/holidays-and-grief-you-need-a-plan/

I’m Just Tired Y’all

I realize yesterday’s post was somewhat out of character.

I was angry and hurt and utterly dumbfounded that another parent might take my words exactly as I wrote them (emphasis and all) and simply lift them out of context and plaster them across the Internet.

My heart is especially vulnerable right now.

My mother just died. It’s only been three weeks. And her death has reopened wounds I’d grown skilled at ignoring.

While I’ve been encouraged by many of you who understand the way I feel, I’ve also been hurt by many who seem to think that if I protect my intellectual property I’m petty and unkind.

So I’m just gonna put this out there-I’m tired, y’all. Worn out.

I’m more exhausted than I’ve been since the first year after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.

The past two years have drained every ounce of reserve I had (and that wasn’t much).

This week has finished me off.

I’m not going to fight to try to get anyone who can’t understand to see my point of view. My debating days are over.

I might just lay the blog aside for awhile. I don’t really know right now.

So, “thank you” to everyone who has come along for the ride. Thank you to every heart that has reached across the miles or across cultures to comment and join in on the conversation. You have encouraged me more than you will ever know.

But I’m tapped out.

❤

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day 2019

It happens in all kinds of ways.

For one reason or another, the tiny life budding in a belly never gets to see the light of day. Never takes a first breath. Never cries. Never opens his or her eyes to the mama waiting to meet her precious one.

So many mamas have experienced the excitement of watching the pregnancy test show positive only to endure days, weeks or months later, the sadness of saying good-bye to a little one they never got to meet.

Statistics tell us that one in four women will become part of this group during their lifetime.

But what statistics can never tell you about anything is why so, so many of the women who survive pregnancy and infant loss don’t talk about it.

Many think they can’t talk about it or shouldn’t talk about it because often the experience is so very personal.

It may be the pregnancy was never announced. It could be that the culture in which a mama lives doesn’t recognize life at conception so, really, what was lost? Perhaps many women in her family have had similar experiences and THEY didn’t “make a big deal” out of it, so why should she?

Then there’s guilt.

So, so much information is shoved into mothers’ faces about what they should and shouldn’t do to promote a healthy pregnancy and birth. Eat this, don’t eat that. Take this, don’t take that. Exercise-but not too strenuously. Drink water. Don’t drink alcohol or too much caffeine.

It’s easy to blame yourself when a baby stops growing.

Some brave mamas carry a baby for months and to the point of birth-see that precious bundle on an ultrasound, hear the heartbeat, watch and feel those legs kick-yet never hear a cry or hold a warm infant in their arms.

That’s a kind of awful no heart should have to bear.

And yet, that loss too is often unacknowledged.

How do you celebrate a life that was lived only inside the comfort and safety of the womb? How do you share a photo of your precious baby when the only one you have (if you have any) is of him wrapped in a blanket, eyes closed, your eyes crying?

If a second pregnancy follows any kind of pregnancy or infant loss, friends and family almost always pounce on the opportunity to push a mama’s heart forward fast and furious to the future of her “rainbow child” making it even less likely her missing baby is acknowledged or remembered.

But she never forgets.

A mama’s heart never lets go of the life that lived inside her.

That tiny baby-one week, one month, full term-is her son or daughter.

Counted among the others.

Just as precious.

Always.

I’m remembering with you, my sweet friends. Tonight I will light a candle along with millions who also remember, to honor the baby I never held. May the multiplied voices and hearts joined together help others hear the message that our child matters.

Every child matters. ❤

Self Care in Grief

Looking back I’m shocked at how much I allowed societal norms and expectations to determine how I grieved Dominic’s death.

I withheld grace from myself that I would have gladly and freely given to another heart who just buried a child. Somehow I thought I had to soldier on in spite of the unbearable sorrow, pain, horror and worldview shattering loss I was enduring.

And the further I got from the date of his accident, the more I expected from myself.

I wrote lists of things I needed to do and surprisingly often I actually got them done.

But I crawled into bed each night exhausted, physically and emotionally drained and often unable to sleep for all the pent up feelings I still needed to process.

It was a dangerous cycle.

Eventually, through contact with other bereaved parents I learned that I absolutely, positively HAD to take care of myself. If I didn’t, there wouldn’t be a me to take care of.

And my family would be plunged beneath a new tsunami of loss.

I wasn’t going to do that to them if I could help it. So I committed to practicing better self-care on this grief journey.

I’m still not always good at it, but I’m better at it than I was.

If you are sucking it up, pushing it down, soldiering on, refusing to admit that grief takes a toll no one can ignore or deny, may I suggest you consider taking a step back and thinking about the ultimate outcome of ignoring your own needs?

Here’s a graphic to get you started.

It’s not an exhaustive list and the examples given may not suit your personality or circumstances but they should give you some ideas to find the activities and habits that will help strengthen you to do the work grief requires.

Grief: In The Words of Others

I’ve collected quotes all my life.

I think it was second grade when I started a notebook dedicated to them-carefully copying out the words of others that spoke the truths of my own heart. Although the topics which draw me are different now, I’m still collecting them.

So here are fifteen quotes on grief that I hope will help another heart:

I once read the sentence ‘I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache and about lying awake.’

That’s true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.

I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Rather often I am asked whether the grief remains as intense as when I wrote. The answer is, No. The wound is no longer raw. But it has not disappeared. That is as it should be. If he was worth loving, he is worth grieving over.

Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved. That worth abides. So I own my grief. I do not try to put it behind me, to get over it, to forget it… Every lament is a love-song.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.

Anne Lamott

They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite

Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

What an awful thing then, being there in our house together with our daughter gone, trying to be equal to so many sudden orders of sorrow, any one of which alone would have wrenched us from our fragile orbits around each other.

Paul Harding, Enon

This was how to help a family who has just lost their child. Wash the clothes, make soup. Don’t ask them what they need, bring them what they need. Keep them warm. Listen to them rant, and cry, and tell their story over and over.

Ann Hood, The Obituary Writer

I guess I always thought it would be bigger, when a terrible thing happened. Didn’t you think so? Doesn’t it seem like houses ought to be caving in, and lightning and thunder, and people tearing their hair in the street? I never – I never thought it would be this small, did you?

Dan Chaon, Stay Awake

There are no words, not in English, Spanish, Arabic, or Hebrew, that have been invented to explain what it’s like to lose a child. The nightmarish heartache of it. The unexplainable trepidation that follows. No mother loses a child without believing she failed as a parent. No father loses a child without believing he failed to protect his family from pain. The child may be gone, but the years the child were meant to live remain behind, solid in the mind like an aging ghost. The birthdays, the holidays, the last days of school—they all remain, circled in red lipstick on a calendar nailed to the wall. A constant shadow that grows, even in the dark. As I was saying…there are no words.

D.E. Eliot, Ruined

Repost: I Really Can’t Hide My Heart


Oh, sometimes I think I’m clever enough to do it.

I edit my words, costume my body and fix my face so  I can act the part.  But truth is, I never manage to fool anyone who looks closer than my plastic smile.

I can’t hide my heart.

And I don’t know why I try-I don’t get points for pretending.

There’s no prize at the end of this long road for the one who makes it with fewest tears.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/10/02/you-cant-hide-your-heart-and-theres-no-points-for-pretending/