One of the things I’ve been forced to embrace in the wake of child loss is there are very few questions, experiences or feelings that are simple anymore.
“How many children do you have?”
A common, get-to-know-you question lobbed across tables, down pews and in the check-out line at the grocery store. But for many bereaved parents, it can be a complex question that gets a different answer depending on who is asking and where we are.
There are so many competing causes it’s a wonder anyone can keep up with them.
But when one or more of them become near and dear to your heart, it’s easy.
July is Bereaved Parents Month. A designation I knew nothing about until several years into my own journey as a bereaved parent.
And while I’m unsure about the necessity for declarations like National Trivia Day or National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day I am absolutely convinced of the need for Bereaved Parents Month.
This is why:Child loss is unlike any other loss a person may experience. It is out-of-order death, unnatural, unexpected and unfathomable.
Every day, bereaved parents are walking in the world, going to work , doing all that life requires and often caring for their other children while carrying a very heavy burden that mostly goes unnoticed.
Many parents desperately want to speak about their missing child but feel constrained by fear others will think they are vying for sympathy or attention. Sometimes they don’t say anything because they’ve been shamed or shushed by negative comments on their social media posts. Still others are longing to find a community where their uniquely painful experience is understood.
Bereaved Parents Month is an opportunity for these parents to share their child with the world without fear or condemnation.
It’s a chance to post articles, information and personal experience that can help those outside the circle of child loss understand the ongoing struggle of walking this path.
Hopefully it is also a season where newly bereaved parents can find resources so their own hearts feel heard, understood and encouraged.
So if you ARE a bereaved parent, please take advantage of this month set aside to raise awareness of our journey.
If youLOVEa bereaved parent, please acknowledge and affirm your friend or family member who may choose to share in person or online a little more freely this month.
Hearts hold on best when they are free to tell their story.
Bereaved Parents Month is set aside for us to tell ours.
My heart hurts every time a name is added to this awful “club” no one wants to join.
One more family knows our pain.
One more family has an empty chair at holiday gatherings.
But I am thankful for the moms and dads that share their hearts in bereaved parents’ groups. I’m thankful for the safe space to speak honestly about what this life feels like and the challenges that greet us in this Valley.
A fellow waiting mom, Brenda Ehly, shared this on her personal Facebook page. I asked her if I could post it here and she graciously gave me permission:
“So, every now and then, I am asked, ‘How are you?’
Just in case any of them meant, ‘What is it like to be grieving a child during the holiday season?’ let me try to explain:
First, imagine you have stepped into a bear trap.
It hurts.
A lot.
Sadly, it’s a magical bear trap, that you will never be able to remove. (That’s your initial loss). Weirdly, after awhile, you sort of (not exactly) get used to it.
Now, imagine that at completely random intervals, a large bear suddenly appears, and, mistakenly thinking that you’re the one who’s been setting bear traps in the forest, repeatedly punches you in the nose.
Hard.
This bear throws one heck of a punch. (This is what happens when you go shopping at the grocery store and Andy Williams croons, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!” at you).
So, is it all miserable, all the time?
Absolutely not; every now and then, an adorable, enchanted raccoon brings you a tall mocha and a blueberry scone, and that is very nice, because even if you’re stuck in a magical (and excruciatingly painful) bear trap, a tall mocha and a fresh scone are still welcome and refreshing.
We are only officially a few days into summer here in Alabama but we’ve already suffered weeks of extra hot weather.
And while I can’t do a thing about the absolute temperature outside, I can make choices that help me tolerate it.
It’s the same in my grief journey.
Everyday decisions make a difference in how well I cope.
❤ Melanie
I walk the half-mile stretch down and back on my driveway at least four or five times a day.
In the winter I follow the sun.
In the summer I follow the shade.
The path I choose to take either adds to or subtracts from my ability to make the trek in relative comfort.
It would be foolish for me to not take advantage of available provisions. It would be silly for me to shiver or sweat more just because I was too lazy to adjust my trajectory.
I can’t change the absolute temperature outside but I can influence how I experience it.
I’ve found that the same practical wisdom applies to my grief journey: I can make things easier or harder on my heart by making even small changes in how I face a day or situation.
I can’t change the fact that my son is dead. But I can influence how I experience it.
On days when I am struggling with sorrow, I seek out some “sunshine”-both actual sunshine by getting outdoors and figurative sunshine by feeding my soul with positive images, thoughts and the truth of Scripture.
I minimize my interaction with “negative Nellies” and sites or shows or books or places that send me further down the path of despair.
I share my struggle with safe people who will listen and not try to correct me or force me into pretending that sorrow is not what I feel.
I go to bed early, knowing that each sunrise brings new mercies from our Heavenly Father and that one bad day does not have to define a week.
On days when I’m overwhelmed with the “heat” of commitment or too many people or too much activity, I seek out some “shade”-I look for a spot in my schedule where I can rest a bit and catch my breath.
I reassess and find things I can give up. I find other ways to meet obligations that give me more space and require less frantic scrambling.
I make myself sit down and slow down, even if it is for just fifteen minutes.
I’m honest with my family and friends, because if I’m not I will end up being ugly and hurting someone’s feelings.
So, so many things about grief are outside my control. I cannot anticipate every random trigger that might land me in a puddle of tears.
Life goes on and continues to demand my participation.
I want to be fully present for my loved ones. I want to show up and make merry for all the special occasions.
So I try to use wisdom in how I approach each day, assessing my grief “temperature” so that I can do what’s necessary to ensure I’m emotionally healthy enough to do what I really want to do.
It’s not true for everyone but it is true for enough of us. The second year after child loss can be especially hard.
Numbness and the rhythm of all the “firsts” in the twelve months following Dominic’s death kept me both anticipating the shock and protecting me from its full impact.
The second year was when it dawned on me that I was doomed to repeat this cycle as long as I lived.
I was absolutely overwhelmed.
❤ Melanie
I remember very well the morning I woke on April 12, 2015-it was one year since I’d gotten the awful news; one year since the life I thought I was going to have turned into the life I didn’t choose.
I was horrified that my heart had continued to beat for 365 days when I was sure it wouldn’t make it through the first 24 hours.
And I was terrified.
During that first year there were multiple punctuated stops along the way-the first major and minor holidays scattered throughout the year, a family wedding, two graduations, Dominic’s birthday and on and on. I’d muddle through and then turn my face forward towards the next one looming in the future.
There was so much emotional upheaval, so many things to process that I was unbalanced, focused only on survival without a thought to anything beyond the next hill.
But when I realized that I’d made it through one year, was still standing, was still breathing and was (apparently) going to survive this horrible blow, I began to think about living this way for the rest of my days.
And it was overwhelming.
Facing something for a defined period of time-even an awful something-is doable. There’s an end in sight, relief on the way, endurance will be rewarded-just hang on.
But when a heart can’t lay hold of the finish line-well, that’s enough to undo even the bravest among us.
All the things I muddled through the first year were just going to circle back around over and over and over for decades!
My grief took on a new dimension-it wasn’t something that was going away-it was life long.
I spent the entire second year and most of the third just wrapping my mind and heart around that FACT and trying to develop tools to carry this burden for the long haul.
Every heart is different, every family unique.
The second year is NOT harder for everyone. I’m not even sure it was HARDER for me. But it was definitely different and full of new challenges.
It forced me to dig deeper than the first year when I was mainly in survival mode.
The crying tapered off but the reality of my son’s absence loomed larger. The breathless agony of his death really did grow more manageable but the prospect of this being a life sentence weighed more heavily on my heart.
But God’s grace has been sufficient in every season of my grief. He has sustained me, strengthened me and carried me.
Here I am-six weeks into year [eleven]-still standing, still fighting and still holding on to hope.
I first shared this years ago when I was reflecting on half a decade of living without one of my children beside me. I’ve now had more than another half decade to think about why or IF I’ll continue to write.
Every so often I take a day or two to consider whether I want to keep posting. I have to admit sometimes that I wonder if I bang the same drum for too long it will sound loud and obnoxious to some people’s ears.
But then I get a message or a comment from someone fresh on this journey and they feel seen, heard, validated and safe.
So I write on.
And I find that writing brings clarity and comfort to my soul. I still have things to say and I hope what I say still brings some small measure of light, love, life and hope to other hearts.
❤ Melanie
I was one of those people years ago who set her sights on starting and maintaining a blog.
I thought I would post a few times a week and share anecdotes about my family and critters, insight into daily living and inspiration from Scripture and interesting quotes.
No, not THIS blog-the other two I started and quickly abandoned to who-knows-where in cyberspace.
Trouble was that the subject matter, while near and dear to my heart, wasn’t personally compelling enough to keep me disciplined and actively writing.
If someone had said, “Pick any topic to write about”, child loss wouldn’t have been in the first million choices.
No one CHOOSES child loss (Thus the name of the blog: The Life I Didn’t Choose).
But untold numbers of parents EXPERIENCE it every year. This very day, parents somewhere got a knock on the door or a phone call or sat next to a hospital bed as life slipped slowly from their child’s tired body.
Since I was already journaling and had walked this Valley for nearly a year and a half, it dawned on me that the ramblings I’d put down might be helpful to another heart. So I started THIS blog in September, 2015.
And I’ve been here ever since.
I’m not in the raw, breathless place I once was. But grief and loss are part of every breath I take, part of every moment I experience.
I miss Dominic. I still consider death an enemy. Every day I hate what was stolen and long for what was. I mourn the changes grief has wrought in my family. I wish things were different. I discover new ways loss impacts my life and new ways of coping with it.
So I keep writing.
I don’t want anyone to feel alone in this journey. I don’t want anyone to think there’s no way to survive. I don’t want a single broken heart to doubt that God is here and that He will help you hold onto hope.
I’ll spill my heart out in words until the words are exhausted.
Why are the photographs of him as a little boy so incredibly hard to look at? Something is over. Now instead of those shiny moments being things we can share together in delighted memories, I, the survivor, have to bear them alone. So it is with all the memories of him. They all lead into blackness. All I can do is remember him, I cannot experience him. Nothing new can happen between us.
~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son
Death is never welcome.
It is always a reminder that I live in a broken world where sickness and time, accidents and sinful choices press the life out of bodies and I am left behind to mourn.
But when people die at a ripe old age, I look back fondly on what they’ve done, where they’ve been, the legacy of work and love and family they leave behind.
No one lives forever.
In the back of my mind I can make room for that fact, even though I don’t like to bring it out and consider it very often. Those that are much older than me will (all things being equal) leave this world before us.
I joined them.
There is part of their lives I know nothing about. And there will be part of mine they will not share.
But my child?
I have known my child since before he entered the light of this world! I felt him in my womb. I experienced who he was before anyone else met him.
I never, ever expected for my life to outlast his!
I always thought there would be new experiences between us, new memories to tuck away, new adventures to look forward to.
Out of order death is unexpected, unnatural, unbelievable.
Today is forty-one years since we said, “I do” and had absolutely NO idea what that would look like.
I first shared this years ago on our anniversary because I wanted other bereaved parents to know that while it is hard (and isn’t marriage always hard?), it is not impossible for a marriage to survive child loss.
We are definitely not the perfect couple. We fuss and we struggle. We sometimes retreat into our own separate worlds as we process some new aspect of living this earthly life without one of our children.
But we have learned that we are stronger together and that we are willing to do the work necessary to stay that way.❤
Today my husband and I celebrate 41 years of marriage.
Our thirtieth anniversary was a mere two months after we buried our son.
Here’s the last “before” anniversary photo (2013)-unfeigned smiles, genuine joy, excitement to have made it that far:
This is us on our thirtieth anniversary, at our oldest son’s wedding -holding one another up as best we could:
This is us a couple of years ago:
We are definitely the worse for wear, but we are still here.
Together.
There are a lot of myths floating around about what happens to a marriage on the other side of child loss. The one tossed out most often cites a “study” reporting 90 percent of marriages fail after the death of a child.
It’s just not true.
But the danger is that if you believe it is true, you may stop trying. You may stop reaching out across the painful abyss that threatens to keep you apart forever. You may decide that living alone with your broken heart is better than living alongside someone who may be broken in very different ways than you are.
It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The truth is that child loss is no more likely to destroy a marriage than a list of other terrible life events-even though child loss is the most terrible.
A child’s death shakes a marriage to its foundations and reveals the weak spots. And EVERY marriage has weak spots.
So the challenge in this season of marriage-like every season of marriage-is to turn toward one another instead of away.Choose to do the work necessary to make it:
Do the best you can to take care of your own emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual health so that you can come together stronger and better able to help one another.
Assume the best and not the worst about your spouse.
Allow for different grieving styles and different ways of honoring your missing child.
Get help from others.
Don’t expect your spouse to carry your load of grief as well as his or her own.
It takes energy and commitment right when we don’t have any to spare. But at least in this, we have a choice.
I have already lost so much over which I had no control.
I will fight for what I CAN hold onto as hard as I know how.
thelifeididntchoose 