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.
Read the rest here: No Mirrors, Please!
We’ve all been at the family dinner table when an elder launches into THAT story-the one that gets dragged out every holiday and several times in between.
Often our eyes roll and we exchange knowing glances with the younger set as if to say, “Here we go again!”
But we point our faces toward the speaker, lean in and lap it up.
Because we know this story is important to her or else she wouldn’t be sharing it again.
You learn a lot about your parents and grandparents, older aunts and uncles by listening carefully to the stories that have stuck around in a head that finds it hard to remember what the body had for breakfast.
Some of the stories are wonderful. Sweet, sweet memories of special times and special friends; of younger years and youthful dreams.
Some of the stories are tragic. The baby brother or sister who only lived a few days or months. The mother that died too soon because there were no drugs to treat a common condition. The friend that never came home from the war.
The stories are windows into souls.
Some of us have stories that need telling NOW. We can’t wait until our age guarantees us a captive audience.
Because telling the stories helps our hearts.
A fellow bereaved mom who has a gift for finding exquisite quotes found this one:
Sometimes I think that if it were possible to tell a story often enough to make the hurt ease up, to make the words slide down my arms and away from me like water, I would tell that story a thousand times.
~Anita Shreve, The Weight of Water
Every time I tell the story of Dominic, it helps to keep him real.
It reminds my heart that he lived, that he mattered, that he matters still.
And in the telling, I am giving away a little bit of him for another heart to carry. His light is passed to another soul that can pass it to another and another.
It doesn’t really take away the hurt and sorrow, but it does help me bear it.
So if I launch into the same old rendition of my favorite memories of my missing son, bear with me.
Be a witness.
Help me carry the burden.
You think because you have “imagined” it, you have an inkling.
But you don’t.
You can’t.
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind.
~Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
This was one of the most surprising things to me-that in spite of all the books I’d read, movies I’d seen, people I’d known (who had grieved a loss in my company)- I knew absolutely nothing of grief.
I did not know it would totally destroy who I was-leaving bits so small that I had no idea how to put them back together.
I did not know it would so completely block the light of the sun that I wouldn’t be able to tell day from night.
I didn’t know that it would change the taste of food, the smell of flowers, the sound of the wind so that everything I tasted, smelled and heard was death.
Thankfully, slowly, the bits have come back together and formed a semblance of the me that was before.
Before grief.
But not really the same. A hollowed out husk of who I was. Familiar shape without the substance.
I’m learning to live with the me that’s left.
Holding on to hope.
Leaning into love.
Original artist : Albert György
Bronze Statue located at Lake Geneva, Switzerland
Just after I got my driver’s license I was using the family station wagon to run some errands.
I remember thinking, “Should I pull into that space between two parked cars or should I just go a bit further and make it easy on myself?” I channeled my dad’s voice which was always pushing me past my comfort zone, threw off my fear and started into the smaller space.
Bad choice.
I kept trying to convince myself it was a dream. I was not going to have to go home and tell my father what I had done. It would disappear if only I wished hard enough.
But that was silly and untrue.
Denting the family wagon is small potatoes next to many other, bigger things I’ve faced in life.
And it is absolutely a zero on a scale of one to ten when considering the death of my son.
You can fix a dent. Even if it costs money and time.
You can’t fix child loss.
Because of that FACT-I wake every morning to the same awful reality: My child is dead. He’s not coming back. My life is forever changed. My family forever altered. My heart will carry this burden to the grave.
That makes waking up hard to do.
Each morning I must force myself to push through an invisible wall and set my feet on ground I’m not sure I want to walk upon.
I must open my eyes and abandon the sweet release of dreamless sleep.
I have to face the light and embrace reality.
Four years and it is still a shock.
Every
Single.
Morning.
I’ve read I Corinthians chapter 13 dozens of times.
It was one of the Scriptures read at my wedding.
And while I thought I understood what Paul meant when he wrote, “Love never fails” and “the greatest of these is love” I was oh, so wrong.
It took the death of my son for my heart to fully embrace the eternal power of love.
I have lost many things since Dominic ran ahead to heaven: my sense of control, any certainty that tomorrow will necessarily be better than today, the life I thought I would have here on earth, and foolish confidence in my own ability to discern how God works in this world.
But I have gained this: Absolute unshakable rock-solid assurance that LOVE lives forever.
Only love can help a heart hold onto hope when all evidence screams, “Let go!”
Only love can overcome despair when darkness clouds my vision and obscures the light.
Only love can weave a golden cord that keeps me connected to my child in heaven.
Only love is strong enough to drive the God of creation to send HIS Son to pay for MY sins.
Love is the strongest force in the universe.
Ask any bereaved parent.
When all else dies,
love lives.
I wrote this a couple of years ago when I realized that in many ways bereaved dads are forgotten mourners.
I think it’s partly due to the fact that many (not all!) men tend to hide their feelings and are less likely to burst into tears when grief waves overtake them.
So most people (who really don’t understand child loss at all-thankfully) assume Dad is doing OK.
I can promise you that Dad is NOT doing OK. His heart is in just as many pieces as Mom’s. And Father’s Day is just as hard for him as Mother’s Day is for her.
I can’t pretend to understand exactly what it feels like to be a father who buries a child. I’ve only been able to watch from the outside as my husband absorbed the impact of that great wound.
But I can tell you this: for dads, like moms, each holiday is another mile marker on the road of grief.
It is another poignant reminder that things are not as they were-they are not as they should be.
Read the rest here: Father’s Day for Bereaved Fathers
Almost anyone you ask anticipates that Thanksgiving and Christmas, two family-centered holidays, are difficult days and seasons for bereaved parents.
And they are.
Especially for families that enjoyed special times around the table, unhurried visits reminiscing about years past and traditions that reinforce the unique heritage of their shared history.
But this time of year is also challenging for me and many other parents who have lost a child.
Read the rest here: Graduations and Weddings and Trips, Oh My!
I only recently came across this quote by Mark Twain.
It’s from a letter he wrote to a close friend after his favorite daughter, Susy, aged 24, died of meningitis while her parents were abroad.
It is heartbreaking and utterly perfect.
You have seen our whole voyage. You have seen us go to sea, a cloud of sail-and the flag at the peak; and you see us now, chartless, adrift-derelicts; battered, water-logged, our sails a ruck of rags, our pride gone. For it is gone. And there is nothing in its place.
The vanity of life was all we had, and there is no more vanity left in us. We are even ashamed of that we had; ashamed that we trusted the promises of life and builded high-to come to this!
I did know that Susy was part of us; I did not know that she could go away; I did not now that she could go away, and take our lives with her, yet leave our dull bodies behind.
And I did not know what she was. To me she was but treasure in the bank; the amount known, the need to look at it daily, handle it, weigh it, count it, realize it, not necessary; and now that I would do it, it is to late; they tell me it is not there, has vanished away in a night, the bank is broken, my fortune is gone, I am a pauper.
How am I to comprehend this? How am I to have it? Why am I robbed, and who is benefited?mark
He and his wife never returned to the home where she died.
It was only last year that I found out there was such a thing as International Bereaved Mother’s Day celebrated on the first Sunday in May.
I hope that my fellow sisters-in-loss took advantage of that opportunity to think about and honor the child or children that won’t be here to celebrate Mother’s Day this Sunday.
Even if you did, it’s not going to be much easier to face a day full of “Happy Mother’s Day!” greetings when your heart may feel anything BUT happy.
Thankful for the opportunity to be a mother-yes. Thankful for children still here on earth with me-yes. Thankful that God has given me the strength to carry on in the face of unimaginable pain and loss-yes.
But “happy”–probably not.
So if your heart is a heavy looking toward tomorrow, I hope this post helps a little.
It’s OK to not be OK.
Read the rest here: Mother’s Day as a Bereaved Mother
I don’t know about you but I absolutely hated the word “fair” when I was raising four little humans.
What seemed like a good idea when training them to share toys was soon turned into a weapon whereby they would shout, “But Mama! That’s not FAIR!!!”
Someone was going to get the last piece of cake or pizza or a tiny bit larger slice of pie. Someone needed shoes this payday but not everyone needed shoes. My daughter required certain items for her dance class, the boys didn’t need a thing.
To kids, “fair” meant even-exactly, precisely, even division of time, talent, money and attention.
But if I tried to turn the tables and suggest that it was one child’s turn to empty the bathroom garbage because another child did it last time, suddenly “fair” wasn’t such a great idea.
Because even young sinful hearts learn that making everything exactly even isn’t really what we want.
What we want is for the fates (and God! and Mama!) to favor US.
We want the bigger piece, we want to be excused from duty when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable. We want, above all, not to suffer-even if the suffering is really not very painful.
As hard as it was to explain that life is. not. fair. to my young children, it has been harder still to explain it to my own heart in the wake of burying Dominic.
Seriously.
What IS fair?
Is it fair that my son shouldn’t die when the laws of physics kicked in as he left the road in a curve?
What about when those same laws mean another son lives?
Is it fair that my children were born in a land not decimated by war or famine-every one born by C-section in clean hospitals with adequate staffing and appropriate facilities?
No, life isn’t fair.
We live in a world marred by sin. It’s a broken world where sometimes people make foolish choices, sinful choices or simply reckless choices.
It’s a world in which disease ravages bodies-young and old-and hearts stop.
I will mourn what I’ve lost. I will weep for what I will never have.
But I will not whine about things not being fair.
I had nearly 24 years with Dominic. Not as many as I expected nor as many as I wanted. His life ended too soon from my perspective regardless of whatever Bible verse someone uses to explain it differently.
He was a gift. And though he is now gone from my sight, I will see him again.
Until then, I will work hard at being thankful and not resentful. One attitude brings life and the other only death.
I’ve had enough death.
I choose life.
