Tag: child loss

When Grief Sneaks Up On You

Dependable routine is one of my most important coping mechanisms.

I like slipping from one familiar chore to the next without thinking.

It keeps my mind busy in an effortless way that leaves little room for random thoughts, little space for grief-inducing memories to sneak in and trip me up.

Change Aversion And The Conflicted User - Usability Geek

Change is really not my friend.

Still, change is upon me (and millions of others!) because of this virus. So I’m doing the best I can to cope.

Instead of a house to myself, now my husband is working from home. Instead of quiet mornings alone, conference calls echo off the walls and follow me out open windows to the yard. Instead of before dark breakfast and early lunch with the kitchen closed by noon, I eat early, he eats later, I eat lunch and he eats supper. Kitchen open til eight.

None of those are things I can’t get used to.

After all, I’m blessed he’s here, has a job and we have not only enough to eat but a wide variety . I like cooking and love finding creative uses for leftovers.

Creative Ways to Use Leftovers - Bites for Foodies

What no one but me knows about all the change is this: I’m walking places I tend not to go-in the house, in the yard, down our paths-and every place I set my foot holds memories I’ve been avoiding.

When we moved an old pen a couple weeks ago for new chickens we found a rusty chain attached to its base. While my husband and son were digging it out to use again I was transported to the day Dominic moved the pen years ago with the tractor. It was just me and him and he was a little perturbed with me that I needed it moved. I saw him in my mind’s eye plain as day on the tractor. I could hear his baritone voice above the trusty thrum of the engine and picture him hopping down from the seat, unhooking the chain and driving off to park the tractor.

It was a flash. Here and gone in an instant. But the rest of the day I suffered from a grief hangover that I just couldn’t shake.

These are challenging days.

So much of the routine I depend on to guide me through has been shredded. So many of the habits I’ve developed over years are unavailable right now.

Image may contain: ocean, cloud, sky and water, possible text that says 'FACEBOOK.COM/ SILENTGRIEFSUPPORT THE GRIEF ATTACKS OF CHILD LOSS ARE so UNEXPECTED. THEY COME CRASHING LIKE A WAVE THAT TRIES TO SWEEP US AWAY CLARA HINTON'

So I’m doing the best I can.

One day and one memory at a time.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Repeat.

Palm Sunday 2020: What If I’m Not Rescued?

This current worldwide crisis has both inspired me to write and constrained me from writing.

There is so much to say but I’m not sure most folks would understand.

Suddenly everyone is living a life they would not have chosen and for most, a life they couldn’t have imagined. But eventually most will resume the life they once had.

Things will return to normal. Kids in school, parents working, social distancing a thing of the past.

But some will never again know the life they had before this virus made its way across the globe. Someone or several someones they love will be snatched from the here and now and transferred to the hereafter.

So what if I’m not rescued?

What if my family isn’t spared?

What if all the faithful prayers lifted on behalf of ones I love don’t stop death from claiming them?

Will I still believe?

Will I still trust that God is a loving Father who is in control and working all things together for His glory and my good?

That was precisely the question before Jerusalem’s Jewish citizens on Palm Sunday and the week that followed. Jesus entered the city to shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”.

The faithful lined the streets and believed the Messiah had come to rescue them from the tyrannical rule and reign of not only irreligious Gentiles but corrupt leaders within the Hebrew hierarchy.

It didn’t take long for them to give up hope and call for His crucifixion.

He didn’t live up to their expectations. He didn’t act according to their timetable. He didn’t rescue them from persecution and suffering.

So they discarded Him.

Six years ago I woke to Palm Sunday wondering why my family wasn’t spared, why my son wasn’t rescued, why death had crossed our threshold and taken up residence in our home.

I had to decide if Jesus was Lord of all or if He was Lord at all.

I came face to face with the fact that God doesn’t need my permission to run the world according to His will. He doesn’t require my consent to do (or not do) anything.

But a God that needs my approval is no God at all.

I went to church that Palm Sunday, lifted my hands and voice in spite of my broken heart because I knew Jesus had not abandoned us.

He is Messiah.

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

Repost: I Don’t Want To Remember My Son

I don’t want to remember my son. 

I want to make memories with him.  

I want him to watch me grow old, to watch him get married and have children and to hear his voice mingled with his siblings at my table.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/04/02/i-dont-want-to-remember-my-son/

Of Child Loss, Pandemics and Panic

Child loss has changed me in ways that continue to unfold even years later.

As pandemic and panic sweep the world, my heart has been both more anxious and less anxious at precisely the same moment.

I’ve experienced more generalized dread and unease fed by media frenzy, friends’ posts and comments and the other-worldly photos of empty streets in big cities and families hanging out balcony windows in Italy and Spain.

Coronavirus: Quarantined Italians sing their hearts out. It's ...

Trauma from sudden death has left its mark and societal panic is is ripping open the wound.

The thin layer that protects my heart most days is wearing thinner.

When the thing you think won’t happen DOES happen, you simply can’t find solace in platitudes or pithy prayers or puny human promises that “every little thing will be all right”.

Image may contain: meme, possible text that says 'Did you know? FEELING LIKE YOUR GRIEF HAS WORSENED WITH THE PANDEMIC IS #PERFECTLYNORMAL'

In a perverse twist, knowing the worst HAS happened, makes me less apprehensive about the future.

I’ve given up the idea that protection is guaranteed by doing all the right things or following all the rules or obeying every law.

Oh, we still do all that!

We are washing our hands, practicing social distancing and limiting necessary trips to anywhere. But my faith is not in any of those things to necessarily keep this silent, creeping evil from my doorstep.

Some might call it defeatist.

I call it reality.

The hours of each day are filled balancing these two opposite but very much connected feelings. Sometimes I want to crawl out of my skin or run as far and as fast as I can. Sometimes I just sit, waiting for whatever might happen TO happen.

The anniversary of Dominic’s death is less than two weeks away so all THIS is layered on top of THAT.

Honestly, it’s exhausting and I wake most mornings already worn out.

Almost six years has taught me the world doesn’t stop spinning and the rising sun won’t wait.

So here I am.

Again.

Welcome To My World

Many of you are waking up each day and facing a world you don’t recognize.

I’ve been doing this for over half a decade.

Almost six years ago my family’s world was shaken in much the same way everyone’s world is being shaken today.

It was precisely as disruptive, unthinkable, even more tragic and there was not one thing we could do to change it except live through it.

Image may contain: outdoor, possible text that says '"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring Pellowe TALK'

I know thousands of bereaved parents and surviving siblings who have learned to live in the time they are given.

If you want to know how to face this crisis with courage, ask them. 

It's Only Natural

Whether surrounded by friends or strangers, I sift through the words threatening to fly out of my mouth very carefully.

Like most of us, there’s a script in my head that doesn’t always bear sharing.

But unlike many, part of my script involves a child that lives in Heaven.

And I’m constantly weighing whether or not I should mention him even though the conversation leads my heart to a memory I very much want to speak aloud.  It often makes others uncomfortable, awkward and upset when I do.  So sometimes I just don’t.

I hate that I edit myself like that.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/03/24/only-natural/

Forest of Sorrow

There are so many ways to describe grief.

So many ways individual hearts walk this path.

For many of us there’s a sense of being locked in time, stuck in space, unable to leave the moment one received the news or the few days before and after.

It’s maddening that the earth still turns, the sun still rises and people go on with life when in so many ways our world is frozen in place.

Elizabeth Gilbert describes deep grief as a “coordinate on the map of time” and a “forest of sorrow”.

I like that.

Child loss is a place no parent wants to go. I found myself in territory so unfamiliar there was no way to get my bearings.

Left alone, I faltered, would have stayed lost, was doomed to walk in circles trying to find my way out.

I desperately needed a guide.

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Thankfully some parents, further along in this awful journey, created safe spaces for broken hearts to gather and to share.

I am oh, so grateful to them for that!

Not everyone who finds the way to hope and light chooses to come back for those still wandering in the forest of sorrow.

But some do.

They retrace painful steps carrying a torch and say, “Come with me. I can show you the way to hope.”