bereaved parents – Page 6 – thelifeididntchoose

Grief Journaling Prompts

Journaling has been and continues to be a very important part of my grief journey.

Putting thoughts on paper gets them out of my head.

Writing them down helps me understand them.

Reading them back is an excellent reflective exercise. It’s a way to track progress, recognize repeating patterns and see where I need to do more grief work.

Sometimes I use Scripture, quotes or other prompts to get me started. Often I may look up words in the dictionary and jot down the definition or synonyms or examples. I may draw my way around a concept or cut out pictures from magazines or the newspaper to add to my creation.

There have been days I’ve spent hours and several sheets of paper moving my feelings from my heart to the page.

So if you want to try your hand at journaling, here is a list I find useful.

Don’t set any parameters or have any expectations.

Just write, color, draw or whatever flows naturally.

And if the tears fall, let them.

❤

Repost: From The Child Not Here on Mother’s Day

My daughter, Fiona, wrote this last year, in the voice of her brother who ran ahead to heaven.

I am so thankful for her and so sorry that she has gained this wisdom at great cost.

Some of the bravest, most loving women I know are those who have suffered one of life’s greatest losses. I hope you know how truly beautiful you are.

“Dear Mom,

Read the rest here: From The Child Not Here on Mother’s Day

My Sixth Mother’s Day as a Bereaved Mother

When it first happened all I could think about was getting through a minute, then a day and then all the decisions and days leading up to a funeral or memorial service.

There’s no road map.

Even when others come alongside (and many, many did!) there’s just no easy way to navigate that part of the journey.

And then I realized that in addition to all the “regular” days that absolutely, positively break your heart, I had to forge a path through “special” days.

It was overwhelming!

Mother’s Day was especially challenging that first year. Our loss was fresh and we’d had to acknowledge and celebrate two graduations and a wedding was about a month away. How in the world could I honor my living children and also safeguard my broken heart?

We muddled through by having Mother’s Day at my daughter’s apartment co-hosted by some of her sweetest and most compassionate friends. Not a lot of fanfare, but good food, good company and a quiet acknowledgment of Dom’s absence but also my living children’s presence.

It was a gift.

This is my sixth Mother’s Day. Every year is different. Every year presents new challenges and every year things change.

Since discovering there is an International Bereaved Mother’s Day my heart has taken advantage of having a day to think about and honor Dominic and then another day to think about and honor my living children.

That helps.

I wrote this post three years ago but can’t really improve on it so I’ll share it again. I pray that each heart who finds Mother’s Day hard will lean in and take hold of the hem of His garment.

It’s really the only way.

Read the rest here: Mother’s Day as a Bereaved Mother

Child Loss by Addiction

We talk about a lot of things as if they didn’t reflect a real person and a real life.

Addiction is one of them. And let me just tell you, every single number is a life and behind every single life is a family.

Statistics are easy to toss around until one of those numbers represents YOUR child.

My son was killed in a single-vehicle motorcycle accident. One of the 76 individuals who died on a motorcycle in Alabama in 2014. If you look it up, you’ll find tables printed with clean edges and comparative data one year to the next.

But if you look at me-and hold up a photo from BEFORE-you’ll see grief etched into a mama’s face that can’t be measured, sifted or weighed.

My son was not an addict. He was a health nut. But he liked his motorcycle and never saw the contradiction between spending hours at the gym then putting that beautiful body on a fast moving, unprotected engine-on-wheels. A helmet was not enough to save him that night.

Addicts don’t start out wanting the life so many of them end up living. They take a puff or a pill or a drink and think it’s all in fun. They have no way to know that the one moment of weakness or even purposeful exploration may result in a lifetime of struggle.

Once caught in the cycle of craving and crawling out and caving again they may or may not eventually find the light. They may or may not become sober for the rest of their days. They may or may not have the inner strength, the outside support, the medical intervention and inpatient treatment they need to conquer this demon.

And it is a demon.

Addiction is never a choice even when the first indulgence into drugs or alcohol is.

Parents living with addicted children do everything they can to guide them to help. They try tough love, abundant grace, boundaries, threats and rewards. Some even move their families to try to escape habitual influences on their child-hoping against hope that a new place and new friends will create a safe space where addiction can’t flourish.

It rarely works. In the end, addiction takes too many of our children. Addiction kills.

And the wreckage left the other side of those deaths is enormous. It’s messy and ugly and hard to sort through.

The one thing NO parent of an addicted child needs is someone else’s misguided advice on how they could have “saved” his or her child. They don’t need quips about “seeing it coming”. They don’t need anyone to heap shame on them because of the choices their child made and the disease that robbed them of choice in the end.

So when we talk about addiction and numbers and treatment and responsibility and especially death, we need to remember that every single statistic is a person.

Every single person has a family.

And that family is devastated.

Speak gently. Extend grace. Offer love.

They already know shame.

International Bereaved Mother’s Day 2019: An Open Letter to my Fellow Sisters in Loss

Dear Mama,

I know that you never-in your wildest imagination-thought that you would need a day set aside for your broken heart and your empty arms.

Who thinks when they learn a new life is growing inside that this same life might be cut short? What heart is brave enough to consider the possibility?

Yet here you are.

I’m so, so sorry.

Read the rest here: International Bereaved Mother’s Day: An Open Letter to my Fellow Sisters in Loss

Why Didn’t I Think of That?

I know (really, I do!) that people MEAN well.

I understand the temptation to share cute little sayings like these in response to a bereaved parent’s Facebook post.

What runs through my mind, even five years later when I read this isn’t, “Oh my! Why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I just turn that frown upside down and CHOOSE to be happy instead of sad.”

Instead it’s, “If I could, don’t you think I WOULD?”

If I could just make a mental adjustment and wash away all my sorrow, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Often those who have been spared think that those who haven’t are holding grief too close, refusing to let it go. They think we are using it as an attention getting prop. They rest certain that if it were them, THEY would rise above, get over or overcome grief.

You will never know how thankful I am that YOU. DON’T. REALLY. KNOW.

So when you’re tempted to subtly correct me and (out of the goodness of your heart) try to steer me toward a “cure” for my grief, think about it. Think about how hollow these words might sound in the ear of a mother or father who will never, ever hear or see or touch their child again. Think about how ridiculous it would be to suggest that all it takes to “be happy” is to “choose” correctly.

Think about which one of your children you could live without.

How Can It Be Five Years??!!

We all experience it from time to time-that moment when your head comprehends that life has kept going but your heart refuses to keep pace.

So today, I’m looking at a calendar that assures me it has been five years since that deputy knocked on my door.

It’s a fact.

My heart says, “It cannot be true. It cannot be that long since I saw my living, breathing son cross the threshold of our family home. It cannot be that long since I made the phone calls that still echo in my ears. It can. not. possibly. be. that. long.”

And yet it is.

If folks ask me how I’m doing, how my family is doing, I usually say we are OK.

Because, all things considered, we ARE.

None of us find daily life unmanageable. None of us have fallen prey to addiction or unhealthy coping mechanisms. None of us sit inside all day, moping and mourning the loss of a life we couldn’t hold onto even if we had seen it slipping away in time to take a firmer grip.

But we are absolutely, utterly, profoundly CHANGED.

I often think back to old Star Trek episodes that showed crew members transporting to the surface of an unknown planet. Their bodies were broken down into the tiniest component molecules and reassembled somewhere else.

I think that’s what this life is like.

We’ve all been disassembled and reassembled.

But instead of everything falling back into place, there are missing bits here and there, gaps too small for others to see but very, very real to us. Connections lost. Memories without proper context.

Feelings floating free of any anchor, bubbling up at the most inconvenient moments.

And we all just plain MISS HIM.

We miss Hector Dominic DeSimone and who he is, what he brought to the table and car rides and family gatherings.

We miss who we were before we knew loss that burrows deep in your bones. We miss the unmitigated joy and celebration we could toss around like confetti at the slightest provocation.

So today, unlike most days, we will give in to the sorrow. We will remember that morning. We won’t brush away the tears or the sad memories.

He is worth every second and every heartache.

He is never forgotten.

He is always, always on our minds.

For You, a Moment; For Me, a Lifetime

I used to look at tombstones in cemeteries and do the math between the dates.

I was most focused on how long this person or that person walked the earth.

I still do that sometimes. But now I do something else as well.

I look to the left and the right to see if the person who ran ahead left parents behind. My eye is drawn to the solitary stones with the same last name next to a double monument clearly honoring a married pair.

And then I do a different kind of math.

I count the years between the last breath of the child and the last breath of his or her mama.

Because while that first date marked an end for everyone else, for the mama, it marked the beginning of the rest of her life- a life she never imagined nor would have chosen.

I wonder how many lives have been cut short by the effects of grief. I know some folks have tried to research it, but it’s so hard. Because grief ends up doing things to bodies that look like aging or like other disease processes and it’s really difficult to tease it out.

But those of us who live this life know.

We know.

What’s a moment for everyone else, is a lifetime for us. What is a date on the calendar, a trip to a funeral home, a casserole delivered to a door in hopes of lifting spirits for everyone else, is so much more for us.

I don’t begrudge your ignorance.

I celebrate it!

My heart breaks every single time another name is added to the roles of “bereaved parent”.

I think a lot about the generations gone before. Before vaccinations, before penicillin, before so many modern blessings that lengthen life and give hope where there used to be none.

I think about the families involved in WWI and WWII. I understand the need to call the first war “The Great War” and assume such atrocities would stop mankind from falling headlong into them again.

But it didn’t.

So, so many families that made the highest sacrifice.

So, so many parents that hung that photo of their son or daughter on the wall and never moved it-because they were as frozen in time as their child.

I have a friend who does home-based physical therapy. She often goes to the homes of elderly patients and lovingly and gracefully listens to their stories. If it is part of their history, they almost always point out the child who never grew older and tell the tale of how much they miss him or her.

It’s so, so hard for others to understand how very different child loss and out-of-order death is from any other loss in this life.

But it is not a moment.

It is not even a week or month or years.

It’s a lifetime.

We miss them and mourn them for a lifetime.

Not a State But a Process

C. S. Lewis gave voice to so much of human experience in ways that help us understand ourselves and one another.

His book, Mere Christianity, began as a series of radio talks that were later compiled, published and sold millions and millions of copies.

I think Lewis managed to use a conversational, inviting voice in all his works.

When I read them I feel like I’m chatting with a friend (granted, an extremely erudite friend!). He and I are discussing a thing, reasoning through it together.

He’s not teaching me something, he’s guiding me to learn it for myself.

When he experienced the loss of his beloved wife, this giant of the faith struggled like all us mortals. His grief journal was eventually published as the book, A Grief Observed, and has helped many of us who sorrow describe our feelings and find our way.

I particularly love this quote:

I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process … There is something new to be chronicled every day. Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape … Not every bend does. Sometimes the surprise is the opposite one; you are presented with exactly the same sort of country you thought you had left behind miles ago.
~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Lewis understood that grief was not a state which could be changed like ice to water through the application of heat.

There is no quick fix for a broken heart. No remedy for missing someone you love.

Instead, grief is a process.

It’s a lifelong journey of remaking a relationship that can no longer depend on physical presence and new memories. It circles back again and again, asking the same questions, sometimes finding new answers but often having to settle for the old ones.

It’s almost five years since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven and while I have forged new paths in that time, much of my travel has been over well-worn ruts that bring me to the same watering holes.

I’m often surprised that life after loss is not linear at all.

I do feel (as I’ve shared before) that the circles progress ever upward.

I’m not standing still.

But I’m not free to escape the valley.

Repost: “Don’t Dwell On That!

Why is it “dwelling” in one instance and “remembering” in another?

Who gets to decide whether I’m taking out a cherished memory, holding it, stroking it and reliving it because it’s all I have left or I’m clutching the past, refusing to let go?

I will be the first to admit that mulling over past offenses is probably the last thing I need to do. Especially if I’m trying to forgive them. That’s not helpful nor is it healthy.

But there’s a difference between THAT kind of thinking and the kind of thinking every bereaved parent does about his or her missing child.

Read the rest here: “Don’t Dwell on That!”

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