grief advocacy – Page 24 – thelifeididntchoose

Grief In Real Life: Friends are Sheltering Trees

If you’ve never been caught short in the midst of an unexpected downpour you might not know how important refuge under the boughs of a cedar or oak tree can be.

Living in the middle of woods, punctuated by open pastures, I’ve retreated more than once to the safety of thick boughs which limit the rain’s ability to soak me through.

I have memorized every safe haven between the road and the middle of my 34 acres.

Faithful friends are like those sheltering trees-offering respite to a weary heart, providing a safe space to take a breath, granting protection when we are pursued by the enemy of our souls.

When Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I was a mess.

Most folks that brushed shoulders with me in public might not have guessed but those who knew me well saw me devolve from “got it together” to “don’t even know what I should be getting together”.

I was utterly devastated.

Some people were repulsed. They either couldn’t handle my ongoing neediness (a week or a month on the prayer list ought to be enough according to them) or they simply found my presence too uncomfortable a reminder that bad things happen regardless of how “good” you are.

But there were a few…a precious, precious few who refused to go away. They showed up and stayed.

It didn’t matter if they had any remarkable insight or help or “solutions” to my heartache.

What mattered is that they bent over my broken heart and provided shelter.

We all need sheltering trees in the storms of life.

And I am beyond thankful for every single person who is brave enough to bear the brunt of evil winds to provide that shelter.

❤

Grief In Real Life: Finding Courage to Face the Future

I think it was somewhere around two months from Dominic’s departure when my heart realized life was moving forward whether I granted permission or not.

Not only folks on the fringes and the “bigger world out there” but close by-in my own family, my own circle of intimate friends-people were making plans, having birthdays, going places and doing things.

I wanted to scream.

Could the world not take more notice that it was absolutely NOT business as usual? Was I the only one whose heart was so shattered that the thought of another sunrise was painful? How could I walk into a future that didn’t include Dominic?

By the grace of God, I did it.

No one can keep the world from turning, the sun from rising, time from ticking by.

But it took a great deal of strength and courage.

takes strengtht to let life pull you forward through grief

First it was a “grin and bear it” kind of courage. I strapped on my armor and tucked a hankie in my pocket. I could show up and smile (a bit), talk (awhile) and muddle through.

Sometimes it didn’t go so well. I had to apologize and leave early. And I was always exhausted.

exhausted-over-trying-to-be-stronger-than-i-feel

Then it was an “I’m going to be present for my family” kind of courage. The last thing I wanted to do was shortchange my earthbound children. I worked to get a better handle on my thoughts and emotions. I learned how to pre-grieve major events and milestones. I found I could bring Dom with me by wearing a meaningful piece of jewelry or tucking a keepsake away where I could touch it if I needed to.

I was able to laugh (most of the time), make small talk and write dates on the calendar again.

Now the courage that helps me hold on as I’m pulled forward into the future is informed by the fact that every passing day is one day closer to the reunion my heart longs for. What first seemed impossible is now habitual. Sorrow and joy can coexist. I don’t have to be empty of one to feel the other. The future is not my enemy-it’s where I can and will love ALL my children, husband, family and friends well until the day we are in eternity together forever.

My love for Dominic is Background Music to everything I do. But it doesn’t always demand my full attention. Sorrow is no longer all I feel and Dominic’s absence no longer all I see.

Sunrise is still hard to face some days.

My heart will always long for the time things were as they should be instead of how they are.

But I’m thankful for the courage to step into the future even when I’m afraid.

sometimes-fear-does-not-subside-and-you-must-choose-to-do-it-afraid

Tempted to Judge Someone Else’s Grief? Please, Don’t.

I’ve never been divorced or lost a spouse.

I’ve never fled for my life from a war torn country with only the clothes on my back or what few belongings I could fit in a small bag.

I’ve never watched my home go up in flames or heard it destroyed around me by wild winds.

But I’ve buried a child.

Grief walks through the door of a heart in all kinds of ways. Bad things happen-even to good people.

Bad things happen to believers in Jesus-even those who have dedicated their lives to living out the gospel message and loving others.

Sadly, when devastating or unbearable tragedy visits those who have devoted time, talent and treasure to building the Body of Christ, they can be most vulnerable to judgement from those who, up to now, would have described them as “pillars of faith”.

Because when their humanity squeezes (or even bursts!) out of the cracks in their hearts, others doubt their testimony.

I was just subjected to an uncomfortable conversation at Wednesday night Bible Study in which someone (who had not lost a child) declared that if a parent responds to this devastation with outsized emotion, they may not have an authentic relationship with Jesus.

They started with the (what I consider to be faulty) premise that “if you are a Christian, you ought to be stronger”.

And then they stepped into territory NO person outside of another’s grief should ever venture: They proceeded to assert that “all that wailing and screaming” some parents exhibited was, essentially, evidence of a weak faith.

I stopped them right there.

I was very upset but calmly defended the fact that this is untrue. Being human is something our Great High Priest understands full well.

So it was more than a “God wink” when this morning I woke to the perfect graphic shared by my dear friend, Jill Sullivan, of While We’re Waiting Ministry:

Child loss is not a hammer in the hands of God. He is not “teaching me a lesson”. He is not waiting to see if I’ll fail some kind of test. He knows I am made of dust.

My Shepherd King is neither surprised nor offended by my weakness or my deep sorrow over my son’s untimely, sudden death. He does not chastise me nor turn His back on me.

Instead, He gathers me in His arms and sings mercy, grace and hope to my battered soul and broken heart.

His banner over me is love.

And nothing I do will change that because that is not only what He does, it is WHO HE IS.

Grief In Real Life: Say It Now. You Might Not Get Another Chance.

I try not to pull the “life’s short” or “you never know” card on people very often.

But there are lots of times I want to.

When you’ve said a casual good-bye to a loved one thinking it’s not that big of a deal only to find out the last time was The LAST Time, you learn not to let things go unsaid or unmended.

It’s never too late to begin the habit of speaking love, blessing and encouragement to important people in your life.

Even if it makes them (or you!) uncomfortable.

Maybe especially then.❤

I’m not sure when I began practicing this but I make a habit of telling people I love them even if it makes them uncomfortable.

promise me something tell them you love them

I remember saying it to my granddaddy who never told anyone-as far as I know-that he loved them.

I spoke it over each child as soon as she or he was laid in my arms.

Growing up, I closed every telephone conversation with, “I love you” and taught my husband to do the same.

tell the people you love that hou love them

I also try hard to tell people other important things right when I think of them, instead of “later”-whenever THAT may be.

when you see something beautiful speak it

I’m so, so glad I do and I did.

I have many regrets about Dominic’s too-soon departure from this life.

But I don’t have this one: Unspoken words of love and affirmation.

The last time he was home, it was nearing final exams and I felt like I needed him to know how very proud I was of him and how very much I admired the man he had become. So I stopped him as he was leaving, turned his strong shoulders to face me square, and looked him in the eye to give him words of blessing.

I didn’t get to hold his hand as he left this life.

But I’m confident as he breathed his last, he knew he was loved.

Don’t wait to tell the people that are important to you that they ARE important to you.

Don’t save words for “next time”, “later” or “when we get together again”.

Just say it.

Now.

Right now.

greatest weakness of humans optimus prime

Grief In Real Life: Mind the Gap

I think often about the things my children know that others don’t have to know.

The fact that life is precious, short and never guaranteed no matter how young or healthy you may be.

The reality that doing everything right or keeping your nose clean or staying “prayed up” doesn’t guarantee you’ll be spared from death, destruction or devastation.

It’s true that several generations ago folks grew up knowing all these things as a matter of course. But we’ve forgotten so much of this with antibiotics, life extending interventions, emergency medicine and abundant food, water and other resources.

I never interact with my earthbound kids without thinking about all the ways we are changed because death has invaded our home and our lives.

❤ Melanie

My youngest son worked hard to retrieve some precious digital photos from an old laptop.

Being very kind, he didn’t tell me that we might have lost them until he was certain he had figured out a way to get them back.

So he and I had a trip down memory lane the other evening.

It was a bumpy ride.

Because for every sweet remembrance there was an equally painful realization that Dominic would never again be lined up alongside the rest of us in family pictures.

The British have a saying, “mind the gap” used to warn rail passengers to pay attention to the space between the train door and the platform. It’s a dangerous opening that one must step over to avoid tripping, or worse.

I was reminded of that when I looked at those old pictures-my children are stair steps-averaging two years apart in age.

But now there will always be a gap between my second and fourth child-a space that threatens to undo me every time we line up for a picture.

I cannot forget that Dominic SHOULD be there. I will never, ever be OK with the fact that he is missing.

To be honest, I miss him most when the rest of us are all together. The space where he should be is highlighted because all the others are filled in.

No one else may notice, but I have to step carefully to keep from falling into a dark hole.

Mind the gap.

Be careful.

Don’t fall.

Every Soldier Is Someone’s Child

I will share this post every Memorial Day without apology because there are so many parents who join our ranks whose child went to Heaven as a result of military service.

The percentage of the population who have one or more family members in the military grows smaller year after year and it is easy to forget that a relative few perform for the rest of us one of the most hazardous and challenging jobs there is.

I remember.

I hope when (or if) you celebrate with family the freedom we enjoy, you also take a moment to honor those who secure and protect it.

❤

Today is a day when we honor those who gave the last full measure in service to our country and our country’s wars.

It is a day to remember and mark with solemn gratitude the sacrifice of a life poured out.

You don’t have to agree with the reasons for a war to grieve the individuals who died fighting it.

Read the rest here: Why Memorial Day Matters

We Can ALL Learn to Love the Wounded

God bless the inventor of Band Aids!

That little tacky plaster has soothed more fears and tears than almost any other invention in the world.

Skinned knee? Put a BandAid on it.

Bee sting? BandAid.

Tiny bump that no one can even see? Oh, sweetie, let me give you a BandAid.

Simply acknowledging pain and woundedness is so often all that is needed to encourage a heart and point it toward healing.

It’s the same in the world of emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds.

But we have yet to invent the BandAid for those.

Instead, frequently we ignore, refute, minimize and pass over the one in our midst who holds out a hand or a heart saying, “I have a boo boo.”

Believe me, I understand-so many of these wounds are incurable, they are uncomfortable to think about, hard to look at.

But often the only thing the hurting heart wants is acknowledgement, a moment of time, a face turned full into theirs, eye-to-eye and unafraid to remain alongside through the pain.

Just as a BandAid bears witness to the wound underneath, our compassionate presence can bear witness to the deeper wounds no one can see.

When we choose to lean in and love, to listen and learn, to walk with the wounded we give a great gift.

I Want to Live Unafraid, Like Dominic

I’ve never been really big on fear.

I jumped from the high dive at three years old-that belly flop hurt but I survived and it fueled my adventurous spirit.

I rode horses other people didn’t like-was bucked off a time or two but no broken bones so that didn’t slow me down.

My dad had an open cockpit biplane and we flew aerobatics over Colorado Springs-fanny pack parachute strapped to my butt “just in case”-upside down and round and round. We never needed to jump and landed safely every time.

Never been afraid of speaking in public.

Never been afraid of strangers.

Never been afraid of heights.

UNTIL.

Until I had children and then I was afraid of nearly EVERYTHING for them.

I didn’t want any harm to befall these tiny humans carrying my heart outside my body. I wanted to protect them, to cushion them, to wrap them in a bubble so that nothing bad ever happened to them.

As they grew, I learned to let go- a little at a time. I learned you can’t prevent the scrapes and bruises and heartaches and disappointments of life. And I learned that a little “harm” made them stronger.

I forgot most of my fears and was again unafraid.

UNTIL Dominic was killed.

And all the old fears came rushing back. I wanted to lock my surviving children in a room and slip food under the door. I HAD to keep them safe.

Only I can’t. It is not possible for me to keep. them. safe.

All I could possibly do is make them afraid. I could make them afraid of choosing their hearts’ desires in an attempt to prevent more pain for mine.

I won’t do that.

I will not allow part of Dominic’s legacy to be that our family lives afraid.

NO.

I choose to release my children and grandchildren to make the best choices they can and to live boldly and unafraid.

When You Just Don’t Want to Think About Tomorrow…

It took me nearly two years to hang a wall calendar again. It took that long, plus some, to add anything to it besides close family birthdays and doctor’s appointments.

I would record what I did AFTER the fact, but I just couldn’t let my heart make plans.

Because I had made plans–lots and lots of plans-before Dominic ran ahead to heaven unexpectedly and wrecked them all.

There’s another reason looking forward is hard on my heart:

No matter how wonderful the event, no matter how anticipated the birth, or wedding, or graduation, or party-there will always, always, always be one person missing.

Sometimes, I still find making firm plans difficult.

I warn friends that I may get up the “morning of” and decide that I just cannot do it. The closest ones (the only ones I really have left) totally understand and never pressure me otherwise.

As the years have passed, I’m now able to look a little bit further into the distance. I’m able to pencil in some fun things more than a week in advance.

I can look up ideas on Pinterest again-ideas for birthday gifts months away, for dinner table decorations and for craft projects to occupy the hottest parts of summer days.

I’ve even boldly formed a ministry, { http://heartacheandhope.org } and committed to retreats and meetings for the whole year!

So if you are in the early days and find thinking about tomorrow too daunting, take heart, dear one.

Eleven years later and I’ve learned to take Dominic WITH me as I walk into tomorrow after tomorrow without his physical presence.

I’m finding ways to keep him close, to have him near, to share him with others so that the vibrant man he was (and still IS-in heaven) is remembered and honored.

The fact is that tomorrow comes whether I am dragged kicking and screaming into the new day or whether I go willingly, with purpose and with grace.

I am trying to choose purpose and grace.

Sometimes it’s really, really hard.

But when I do-it’s worth it.

Surprising Things Can Make Grieving Harder

I’m the kind of person who thinks a lot about what makes people tick.

I always assume the person in front of me is the sum of his or her experiences.

We all are, really.

No one wakes up one day and just “is”. We become, over time, as our innate nature interacts with the world around us. First our parents and siblings influence us and then school, friends, life experience either gently molds us or pounds us into shape.

Often we get so used to our own way of doing and being we never give it much thought. It’s just “how we are”. We work around our faults and try to use our strengths to our advantage.

Most of us are pretty good at it.

Then something earth shattering comes along and suddenly the cracks are exposed and we haven’t the energy to cover them over.

Grieving hearts can be overwhelmed by all the seemingly unrelated issues that crop up after child loss. They lament that the pain and sorrow they bear missing their child is more than enough of a burden. Why, oh why are all these other things demanding attention at the same time?

How we grieve is informed by so many things!

Not only by our relationship with the one we miss but also our relationship with previous losses, ourselves and others.

Here are some often overlooked things that affect our grief:

Relationship with the one we miss. I think most of us realize this intuitively but we might be afraid to look deeper than the most recent memories and feelings. Dominic was almost 24 when he was killed in a single-vehicle motorcycle accident. At first my reaction to his death was mostly about losing him as a young adult. Over time I mourned losing him as a younger middle child who came along when I wasn’t taking as many photos of babies and toddlers (I have far fewer of him than his older siblings!). I mourned not making as much of his high school graduation and being not long out of major surgery for his college graduation. I mourned not making videos of his amazing drum playing because, you know, there’s always next time. My relationship with Dominic was complicated as all relationships are. I’m still discovering sore spots, having to think about, feel them and forgive myself or him for that specific pain. It takes time and willingness to explore my heart even when it hurts.
Relationship to previous losses. We’ve all suffered loss in our lifetimes. It might not have been due to death, but something or someone was taken from us, left us or is missing. And we’ve observed how others in our family have dealt (or not dealt) with loss. How we processed previous loss-what we learned or didn’t learn-in the course of living through it impacts how we approach child loss. I suffered numerous smaller losses before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven. One of the most profound was the decade prior to his leaving when my health declined in ways I could neither control nor anticipate. Over and over I was forced to accept that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t MAKE something happen (or not happen). I had already surrendered, for the most part, to the worldview that I was not in control. It didn’t stop my heart from crying out nor stop my mind from trying to find a reason for this awful tragedy, but it helped me get past the initial disbelief that it could happen at all.
Relationship to ourselves. Some of us are masters of ignoring inner voices and prodding. Some folks never have a conversation with themselves, question their own motives or examine their own behavior. They walk through life and experience it moment by moment, day by day without looking too far ahead or looking over their shoulder at what they might leave in their wake. I’d love to have a day like that. Because I’m precisely the opposite. I will replay a conversation a dozen times trying to figure out where it went wrong or what I could have said differently. I am never free of a long list of self-imposed “Do’s and Don’t’s”. Even while grieving, I had expectations regarding what was allowed and what was out of bounds. It took time for me to give my heart permission to do whatever was necessary as long as it didn’t harm me or others. The less introspective may need help setting boundaries around their words and behavior so they don’t damage other hearts and relationships in unbridled grief.
Relationship to others. One of the most shocking realizations in child loss is that although others are in your immediate grief circle (spouse, other children, grandparents) no one has precisely the same relationship with the missing child. And every relationship within a family is impacted by the space left behind. Families are reshaped as much by the subtraction of a member as by the addition of a new baby or spouse. It changes everything. So even in this intimate setting, misunderstandings happen. Each person is working through their own grief. As they do, they will change. And the cycle begins anew. The husband I knew and the children I knew BEFORE Dom left have been reshaped as much by this experience as I have. I tend to want to relate to the people they were before and not to the people they are NOW. The gap between the two can be difficult to navigate. We continue to learn to live together in our new reality-changing and (hopefully) growing together. We talk more about important things, hide less behind false fronts and work harder at keeping short accounts.

Child loss shook me to the core.

It rattled every loose thought and feeling so hard they fell out and I was forced to deal with them. It ripped away any facade I’d managed to construct around poor coping techniques and suddenly I had to find new ones. Excuses that served to kick relationship problems down the road weren’t enough anymore.

There was a lot of work to do.

Still is.

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