I participate in a number of online support groups for bereaved parents.
And one topic that makes the rounds at least once a week-often once a day-is how those outside our experience cannot truly understand our experience.
Because it’s true-you THINK you can imagine the pain of child loss if you have children, but even the most vivid imagination can’t conjure the utter blackness that waits on the other side of hearing, “Your son is dead.”
Read the rest here: The Mercy of Not Knowing
This was shared in a bereaved parents’ group to which I belong and I really like it.
It’s a great reminder to those of us traveling this road that it is a lifelong journey.
It’s also a good explanation of why there is a gap between our experience and those who have never experienced child loss.
Read the rest here: No Way to “Fix” Child Loss
I wrote this three years ago and it was probably one of the first posts where I was bold enough to bare it all.
I was afraid to hit “publish” because I was afraid it would be misunderstood or seem pushy or too raw.
But then something amazing happened-I was out shopping later that day and had an email come through from the Huffington Post.
I thought it was a joke.
It wasn’t-they wanted to publish this on their blogging website platform. And they did. (You can read it here.)
It’s still one of my favorite posts-not because it was picked up by them but because it’s been shared by many, many grieving parents in an attempt to open the door of the closet full of emotions we often keep hidden.
People say, “I can’t imagine.“
But then they do.
They think that missing a dead child is like missing your kid at college or on the mission field but harder and longer.
That’s not it at all.
It isn’t nostalgia for a time when things were different or better or you talked more: it’s a gut-wrenching, breath-robbing, knee-buckling, aching groan that lives inside you begging to be released.
Read the rest What Grieving Parents Want Others to Know.
The human heart is a funny thing-always working hard to protect itself from grievous injury yet prone to exactly what it tries to prevent.
I honestly believe that one of the gifts of early grief is disbelief. Because if I could have understood at once what it meant that Dominic was really, truly GONE, I would have never lasted the first 24 hours.
Even now, going on seven years, my head plays games with my heart.
Missing my son is very much like bringing him home except in reverse.
I don’t know about you, but each child added to our quiver slipped in and seemed like he had always been there. It was nearly impossible to remember life before he joined us. I knew, as a matter of FACT, that months and even years had passed without him there, but it was so natural, so beautiful, so perfect now that he was here, the before faded in the background of the after.
It’s much the same way now that he’s gone.
Nature abhors a vacuum and so does the human mind and heart. The spaces I was able to keep sacred to Dominic’s memory (or maybe because some part of my heart held out hope he’d return) are slowly being filled in by people and events and things that he’s never met, participated in or touched. They crowd out the Sacred Spaces I have worked hard to maintain.
And bit by bit it’s as if it’s always been THIS way.
Only it hasn’t.
I’m not forgetting my son. That will NEVER happen. But I am losing the daily pathways that once helped me trace his fingerprints on my life, my belongings and my heart.
And that makes me sad.
I’m trying hard to find new ways to keep him current, part of everyday conversation, events and gatherings. I want his name mentioned as naturally as that of my other children. I want the funny things he used to do remembered and recounted. I want my oldest son’s child to know Uncle Dominic as well as his or her other aunts and uncles.
There are still moments, days and even a week here and there, when it feels like only yesterday that Dominic left for Heaven. The pain is as fresh, as intense, as unbelievable as it was when I got the news.
That shocks me every time.
But most days I’m digging deep to tap old memories, working hard to weave his story into our ongoing story and looking for ways to keep his legacy alive for the generation to come.
Time is a funny thing.
Yesterday AND forever.
It’s popular in books, self-help articles and even in some grief groups for people to declare , “Child loss does not (will not, should not) define me”.
And while I will defend to the end another parent’s right to walk this path however seems best and most healing to him or her, to that statement I say, “Bah! Humbug!”
Child loss DOES define me.
It defines me in the same way that motherhood and marriage define me. It defines me as much as any other major milestone, event, choice or experience defines me.
How could it not define me and inform the person I am today?
But it does NOT circumscribe me.
Listen carefully to these next words: Child loss is a huge part of who I am but it does not draw a circle around who I am becoming. It is not a line in the sand I cannot cross. It is not a ball and chain weighing me down and preventing my forward motion.
It is not the ONLY thing I am, but it is an important part of who I am.
In many ways it has made life harder-especially in the first three years after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven. But in other ways it has made my life more open, larger, expansive and inclusive. Child loss has opened my eyes to other hurting hearts in ways I doubt I would have noticed if my own had not been broken. Child loss has taught me the language of compassion and the necessity of listening well to other people. Child loss has rearranged my schedule and my priorities.
It most certainly helps to define the woman I am today.
Would I have chosen it? Absolutely not!
But I won’t waste it.
I choose to enfold it into who I am and what I do and how I live.
I cannot set it aside and ignore it any more than I could set aside my son.
Could you?
My friend and fellow bereaved mom, Leslie Lamm Harder, has published a book chronicling the first months after the sudden death of her son, William.
I’ve not met Leslie face-to-face but have had the blessing of her long distance friendship for over a year now and am constantly and consistently encouraged by her words.
I believe you will be too.
Leslie has written a memoir that takes an honest yet hope-filled look at life after child loss. I appreciate that she chose not to edit out the questions, the hard days, the words that reveal the struggle a heart has to go through when tragedy strikes.
While always clinging to and pointing the reader back to her hope in Christ, she doesn’t hide the truth that hope cannot take the pain away.
It makes it bearable, but it does not remove it.
Many books about child loss are written so long after the event that some authors’ words are inaccessible to the parent who has just started down this path. The author has reached a point of healing that a freshly broken heart can’t comprehend.
Healing does happen.
But it is very slow and incremental and not without setbacks.
Leslie’s book is an excellent aid for any heart seeking to hold onto hope in the dark Valley of child loss. She walks us quietly, gently down the path without insisting on an early declaration of “victory in Jesus”.
I can’t recommend it highly enough.
It will be on my shelf forever and I will be giving copies to parents for years to come.
(Available at Amazon.com)
I’m not a huge fan of the images of Heaven that feature people floating on clouds.
But I love this one.
Here’s why: Because it highlights the lifelong impact of child loss on a parent’s heart.
You can agree or disagree with his politics or her choice of service projects, but you can’t argue with the evidence of lives lived passionately committed to loving others and doing good in the world.
And I absolutely, positively believe that a huge part of what informed that passion was burying a child.
A heart that has endured such painful loss cannot remain unchanged.
Brokenness begets bountiful love if you let it.
And I believe the Bushes did just that.
I am thankful they are reunited-no more pain, no more suffering, no more waiting for redemption.
So I’ll hang onto this whimsical cartoon as a reminder to my heart that even as I wait, longing for the same, I can choose to live a life of loving service.
As long as I am here, I will reach out
reach down
reach across
to touch the hands and hearts of other hurting humans.
Thank you, George and Barbara, for your example.
Enjoy your reward. ❤
It comes up again and again-and not just for the parents facing their year of “firsts”: How do I survive December with a broken heart?
There’s no single answer or list of things to do that will suit every family.
But there are some general principles that can make even this awful reality a little easier.
Read the rest here: How To Survive December With a Broken Heart
I keep it in my pocket-
an old trinket or a square of fabric or a small photo in a tiny frame.
A little bit of you to hold when I am overwhelmed.
Read the rest here:Love Tokens
I’ve gotten a similar comment from two different bereaved fathers in the past two days.
It goes something like this, “I’m offended by the implication (one was in a meme, another was a reader comment) that mothers grieve more than dads”.
I appreciate the comments even though I disagreed with the interpretation these men gave to what was actually stated.
I responded by saying that since I am a mother-not a father-I write from my own perspective. I don’t try to fit my shoes on anyone else’s feet.
I also said that if they chose to read any blog post I have written, I have never implied nor stated that a father’s grief is somehow less than a mother’s. The only differentiation I make between my grief and anyone else’s is that child loss is qualitatively different than other kinds of loss.
Losing your hamster just isn’t the same.
I don’t claim special status because I’m a mother grieving my child.
But I will absolutely, positively admit that often dads get overlooked when people offer comfort and solace.
Maybe it’s because fathers (as a group) tend to be more stoic, less demonstrative and quieter about the boatload of feelings grief brings. Often men grieve privately, shed tears in secret and may not post anything on social media even when they are really struggling.
As all of us in the bereaved parent community know, most folks are trying hard to wait us out-hoping beyond hope that this period of active mourning will pass sooner rather than later.
So dads sometimes play right into that desire by staying silent.
Let me just say this: Fathers grieve too.
Dads miss their children just as much as mothers. My husband was overwhelmed by grief for months after Dominic left us. It literally incapacitated him for a period of time. So I know firsthand about a father’s grief.
If you’re a dad and feel marginalized, overlooked, forgotten or underrepresented in the bereaved parent community, may I ask you to do me a favor?
Open up.
Share your grief.
Be a voice for bereaved dads everywhere.
I, for one, want to hear what you have to say.
❤
thelifeididntchoose 