Tag: funeral

Reminiscing

I’m at my dad’s place this weekend for a family funeral.

My great-aunt, the last of seven adult siblings in my grandmother’s family left for Heaven in April. So cousins from around the country are gathering to honor our family legacy and remember, remember, remember.

It’s hit my particularly vulnerable heart (Dominic’s birthday is May 28) hard, hard, hard.

I wake up each morning in the the home where my great-grandparents, my grandparents and my mama lived. My dad still lives here. So. much. life. has transpired within these walls.

Death has been here too.

Grandpapa Cox was laid out in the living room. I remember looking down on him lying there and asking what he was doing, stiff and still in that box.

When I sat in the pew next to more than two dozen folks with whom I share DNA I thought about the hymns and prayers lifted in the little country church we’d all attended at various times. I pictured my gray-haired greatgrandmother, Mama Eva, sitting in the corner by the window-her daughters next to her. I saw my own mama’s casket centered below the pulpit, her hands holding the white rose and Dominic’s photograph.

And here we all are writing new stories while carrying chapters from the old ones with us into the future.

People say, “Let’s not wait until the next funeral to get together” but we almost always do. The most complete family photos tend to be at sad events when folks are compelled to show up and don’t dare offer feeble excuses for not coming.

We have our share of photos from the past couple days. Cousins now lined up with gray hair and laugh lines just like our parents and grandparents before us.

One thing I’ve learned from death is this: you can’t stop time no matter how badly you might wish you could.

For those of us who have experienced child loss we not only mourn what we once had and knew but what we will never have and never know. We lost a future as well as a past.

I’m thankful that most of my folks tend to live long lives and leave for Heaven at a ripe old age.

I’m so sorry that Dominic wasn’t one of them.

Today I’ll breathe and rest and digest the old memories and the new ones.

I’m thankful these good-byes aren’t final.

I’m thankful I’ll see the ones I love sooner than I might imagine.

Eight Years Is a Long Time

Today marks eight years since we gathered with friends and family to say our final good-bye to Dominic.

It had been eleven long days since the deputy woke me up on April 12th. Days when I was both unbelieving and overwhelmed by the fact my son would never cross the threshold again.

I woke up that morning numb.

I’d cried every day but for some reason when faced with this final act I couldn’t muster tears.

We received folks for a couple of hours before the service began and during that time I reached behind my back and placed my fingers in Dominic’s cold right hand clinging to the few moments I had left with his earthly shell.

So, so many people I didn’t expect to come, came. So, so many hugs and whispered words and sad smiles marched past as we were forced to participate in a parent’s worst nightmare.

When the funeral director indicated it was “time” I didn’t want to let go. I turned, kissed his cheek and drank in the last glimpse of his face in this life.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Eight years have come and gone.

The first few were excruciating-I experienced every moment of every day through my pain. I spent hours upon hours thinking about and processing what had happened and what I’d lost.

Gradually, over time, and by doing the work grief requires, I have become stronger and life has grown around my loss. I’ve learned that joy and sadness can coexist. Color has returned to my grayscale world. Most of the shattered pieces of me have reassembled themselves into a kind of whole. My family has survived.

I’m so thankful for every person who helped that day when we laid Dominic to rest. I’m so thankful for every person who has helped since. I’m especially thankful to my family for not giving up on me or on one another.

But I’m still astonished that nearly a decade has passed and Dominic is not part of a single memory or photograph.

Grief anniversaries stop me in my tracks and require my full attention.

Today is sacred. It’s a line in the sand marking “before” and “after”.

It deserves to be remembered.

Dominic deserves to be remembered.

So today I will remember. ❤

How to Transition from “Good-bye” to Grief

A funeral or memorial service seems like a final chapter.  We close the coffin, close the doors and everyone goes home.

But for bereaved parents and their surviving children, it’s not an end, it is a beginning.

Much like a wedding or birth serves as the threshold to a new way of life, a new commitment, a new understanding of who you are, burying a child does the same.

Read the rest here: Loving Well: Transitioning From “Good-bye” to Grief

Some Helpful Things To Say and Do For Grieving Family and Friends

When my mother suffered a stroke, brief hospital stay and then joined Dominic in Heaven just over two years ago it brought it all back.

The crowded house, telephone calls-repeating, repeating, repeating the necessary details to friends and family-decisions and bone-tired weariness that never leads to sleep. This time, though, I had the sad advantage of experience.

I didn’t think I’d write at all that week but then this list of truly helpful things came to mind so I jotted it down. I believe if we share more openly with the nonbereaved, they will be better equipped to come alongside.

❤ Melanie

I have learned so much since that day when Dominic left us suddenly for Heaven.

Some of the things I know now are things I wish I didn’t know at all.

Many serve me well-not only in how I respond to my own pain and loss-but also how I respond to the pain and loss in the lives of those I love.

Read the rest here: So What SHOULD I Say or Do For My Grieving Friends or Family?

Bereaved Parents Month 2021: How Do You Breathe?

I’m ending Bereaved Parents Month by sharing this post because I still have moments when I marvel that I’ve survived.

❤

It was the question I asked the bereaved mother that came to my son’s funeral.

It was the question a mother asked me as we stood by her granddaughter’s casket, surrounded by family and flowers.

And it is the right question.

Because when the breath leaves the body of your child, and you look down at the shell that used to be the home of a vibrant, living soul, you simply can. not. breathe.

Read the rest here: How Do You Breathe?

A Thousand Pieces

We buried the earthly remains of my son seven years ago today.

I still have no idea how I walked away from that deep pit where his body would be lowered never to see daylight again.

But I did.

Western society doesn’t like to acknowledge the horror of death. We don’t like to be too dramatic, cry too loudly, wail and weep throwing our bodies over a casket.

But maybe we should.

Why can’t we have a dramatic outburst at the edge of death that burns an unforgettable image in the hearts and minds of those who join us to say good-bye?

Read the rest here: Fragments

These Are My People

In the South I called lots of people “Aunt” and “Uncle” who weren’t related to our family by blood.

It is a beautiful custom that designates what some today call “framily”-those with whom one shares life and love and intimacy but not DNA.

Life: Friends + Family = Framily | Family love quotes, Family ...

It’s a wonderful gift.

Children are surrounded by adults that speak wisdom and show support and cheer them on. I was blessed to have many of these special people growing up.

Early Sunday morning one of my uncles-Uncle Ed- left this world and stepped into Heaven.

And while I know he is in a better place, healed and whole, it hurts my heart to know that another person who helped shape me is now out of reach.

George Ewing

I hope that after he was welcomed by Jesus he found Mama and Dominic and hugged their necks.

It brings me great pleasure to think of all the people I love that are waiting on me just as I am waiting to be with them again.

I don’t go to many funerals. It’s just too hard since looking at my own son’s body lying motionless in a casket.

But I will be at his tomorrow morning. So will my daddy and my brother.

Because these are my people.

❤

A Thousand Fragments

We buried the earthly remains of my son six years ago today.

I still have no idea how I walked away from that deep pit where his body would be lowered never to see daylight again.

But I did.

Western society doesn’t like to acknowledge the horror of death. We don’t like to be too dramatic, cry too loudly, wail and weep throwing our bodies over a casket.

But maybe we should.

Why can’t we have a dramatic outburst at the edge of death that burns an unforgettable image in the hearts and minds of those who join us to say good-bye?

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/04/12/fragments/

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.

grieving mother at grave

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.

grief as timeless as love

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.  

cant-fix-it-my-family-is-always-achingly-incomplete

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.  

grief is a pain that cant be spoken goes on and on

 

Love in Action: Transitioning From “Good-bye” to Grief

A funeral or memorial service seems like a final chapter.  We close the coffin, close the doors and everyone goes home.

But for bereaved parents and their surviving children, it’s not an end, it is a beginning.

Much like a wedding or birth serves as the threshold to a new way of life, a new commitment, a new understanding of who you are, burying a child does the same.

Read the rest here:   Loving Well: Transitioning From “Good-bye” to Grief

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