Dear Mama,
I know that you never-in your wildest imagination-thought that you would need a day set aside for your broken heart and your empty arms.
Who thinks when they learn a new life is growing inside that this same life might be cut short? What heart is brave enough to consider the possibility?
Yet here you are.
I’m so, so sorry.
Read the rest here: International Bereaved Mother’s Day: An Open Letter to my Fellow Sisters in Loss
In some liturgical Christian traditions, today is the day the church remembers and honors Mary anointing the feet of Jesus with expensive and rare perfume.
It was a beautiful act of great sacrifice as the perfume would ordinarily be a family treasure broken and used only at death for anointing a beloved body.
It’s also an expression of deep sorrow because somehow Mary knew.
Mary. Knew.
So she poured out her precious gift on the One Who loves her most.
Tears are my sacrifice.
Holy Week Reflections: Sorrow Lifted as Sacrifice
I wrote this last year about this time but it suits me this year too.
So many big stressors combined with dozens of small ones have me begging God for relief. The end is not in sight but I DO know how the story ends.
If I can hold onto hope -which I manage to do most days-and make space for my heart on the days I just can’t, it will be alright.
Maybe not soon and certainly not in this lifetime. But it WILL be alright. ❤
Today is full of tears.
No real reason-other than the obvious one-but so many things coming together to remind me this life is hard, hard, hard.
I find on this side of burying Dominic that when two or three other stressful events pile one atop the other I crumble. Sometimes it’s other family members doing the best they can to muddle through and sometimes it’s physical pain or disappointment or the random “ya-ya” stuff of life in community with other people Whatever it is, the weight-in addition to grief-just absolutely overwhelms me.
I used to be stronger.
Or at least I thought I was stronger.
Read the rest here: Just Plain Hard
The recent spate of apparent suicides connected to school shootings should be a wake up call.
Not that everyone who survives trauma may follow suit.
But every soul who survives trauma struggles-no matter what it looks like from the outside.
I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975…That was a long time ago but it’s wrong what they say about the past….Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years.
~ Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Witnessing or experiencing horror scars a heart. And society rarely does a good job making room for the kind of work it takes for that heart to even begin to heal.
Feel-good news stories about activism, heroism and turning tragedy into triumph send a signal that if you can’t “get over it“, “overcome” or “become stronger” in the wake of the most awful day of your life, you aren’t trying hard enough.
But the truth is that most people DO try.
They try and try and try but trying isn’t enough. Tragedy and trauma change a person and no matter how much they may want to go back to the “old” them, they just can’t.
And that is OK.
We must allow survivors to take as long as they take and to adjust their lives however they can. We need to stop insisting that there’s a time limit on grief or that there is an absolute upward trajectory in recovery.
I don’t know what drove these individuals to die by suicide.
But I do know that as a society we are not tolerant of people who don’t “deal” with their “issues” and live a life accepted as “normal”.
And that is not only unhelpful, it’s despicable.
No one has the right to shut down another person’s voice or circumscribe another heart’s journey.
We need to do better.
We have to create safe spaces for people to admit they are fundamentally and permanently changed by a traumatic experience.
We have got to make room for messy and unfinished stories.
Another bereaved mom wrote that she was better able to cope now than she had been a year ago.
And thanks to Facebook memories she had proof.
Several comments down a second mom wrote something that got me thinking-when, exactly, did Dominic’s loss move from the forefront to the background?
I’m not sure I can pinpoint a day or moment when I realized that sorrow was no longer ALL I feel and Dominic’s absence no longer ALL I see.
I remember when more experienced loss moms posted and talked about grief being gentler and quieter I thought that they were out of their minds.
How in the world would this breath-robbing, heart-stopping, crippling pain ever be anything close to “gentle”?
How could the pulsating, blasting, all-consuming noise of loss become softer?
In the first days, months and even years, everything about loss was so loud it was all I could hear.
Rock concert, standing-next-to-the-giant-speakers-loud.
So loud it shook my body and made me want to cover my ears. There was no way to block the sound, no silent corner where I could retreat and hide. Just relentless pounding noise and pain.
But little by little, in imperceptible increments the volume decreased.
Now, missing Dominic is the background music to everything. A quiet tune I hum in my head that keeps me company all day and invades my dreams at night.
If I take a moment and pay attention or when other things quiet down, it moves again to the forefront.
My head and heart are never free of the music Dominic brings to my life. He is the soundtrack to my days, the lullaby as I fall asleep.
No longer an ear-piercing scream demanding attention, grief is now mostly a quiet song in a minor key.
Never silent.
Always playing.
I think broken hearts have a unique gift to offer the Body of Christ.
When we choose to be open about our wounds, our tears, our fears and our struggles we invite others to do the same.
Working through them together we are ALL stronger and better able to face the next battle.
Paul often wrote in his letters about a particular hardship he faced or was facing. He shared so others could see not only that he struggled, but that the Lord stood with him and would do the same for them if they held on.
How encouraging for hurting hearts to know that they are not alone!
Our tears unite us. They make us safe. They allow us to whisper, “The Lord helped me survive and He’ll help you too. I’ll hold your hand while you find your way to Him.” And when we make one other human simply see they aren’t alone, we make the world a better place. ~Lysa Terkeurst (twitter)
Our family is looking forward to Spring and also dreading it.
This year we will welcome a new baby (my first grandchild) and also celebrate my daughter’s wedding to a wonderful man.
Our family is growing again!
But we will also mark the fifth year anniversary of Dominic leaving for Heaven and another birthday that he won’t be here to greet.
I’m pretty sure tears will be shed on each of these days and they will be salty-sweet, sad and happy, sorrowful and celebratory-all at once.
There are no more hard lines in my life that separate events into distinct categories where only a single set of emotions is appropriate. Instead my heart’s a watercolor mosaic where one feeling washes into another, darker colors make the lighter ones brighter.
My daughter recently wrote her own blog post, Guest Books & Memory Tables: A Sibling’s Perspective on Love and Loss.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Even Hobby Lobby reminds me that if I’m remembering anyone at my wedding it should be the family legends of generations past, not current. Somewhere in my carefully- packed boxes of wedding decorations, sits frames and mementos for mine and my fiance’s grandparents and my forever-frozen-in-time 23 year old brother.
I highly recommend you read the whole thing. She’s done a beautiful job sharing from a sibling’s perspective.
Her wedding day will be full of great joy and celebration and also some sorrow as we take pictures of the whole family minus one.
I might be laughing one minute and crying the next.
And that’s OK.
No need to fake it.
It’s ALL part of life. ❤
I am convinced that one of the main reasons we detest tears, sorrow and lament is because we’ve adopted a cardboard copy of the true gospel message.
When Christ came, He was (in part) missed by many because they were looking for a King who would save them from their physical misery and oppression under Rome. When He offered them the keys to a Kingdom not of this world, a Kingdom that would fill their hearts and souls but not necessarily their bellies, many turned away.
Our tears remind folks that while many in North America (especially) live a life that is relatively peaceful, abundant and overflowing with material blessings, bad things happen.
As a matter of fact, bad things happen with no explanation, no earthly remedy and no way through but through.
Who wants to be reminded of that if your life is so lovely you don’t have to be?
It’s an odd thing. Jesus wept. Job wept. David wept. Jeremiah wept. They did it openly. Their weeping became a matter of public record. Their weeping sanctioned by inclusion in our Holy Scriptures, a continuing and reliable witness that weeping has an honored place in the life of faith.
But just try it yourself. Even, maybe especially, in church where these tear-soaked Scriptures are provided to shape our souls and form our behavior. Before you know it a half-dozen men and women surround you with handkerchiefs, murmuring reassurances, telling you that it is going to be alright, intent on helping you to ‘get over it.’
Why are Christians, of all people, embarrassed by tears, uneasy in the presence of sorrow, unpracticed in the language of lament? It certainly is not a biblical heritage, for virtually all our ancestors in the faith were thoroughly ‘acquainted with grief.’ And our Savior was, as everyone knows, ‘a Man of Sorrows.’
~Eugene Patterson
It’s funny what can make my heart race and my eyes fill with tears.
Sometimes it’s obvious- I hear of another son killed in a motorcycle accident.
But sometimes it’s obscure- like when I see someone using a legal pad to take notes.
Either way, triggers take me back to ground zero. They rivet my mind’s attention and my heart’s focus to the very moment I first learned Dominic had left us.
Triggers can happen anywhere, any time. They are often unpredictable and surprising.
And there is not one. single. thing. I can do about them.
Even six plus years into this journey and I am as vulnerable today as I’ve ever been.
I try to limit my exposure. I try to have an escape route. I try to suck up the tears and stifle the sobs.
But sometimes no matter how hard I try, I’m overwhelmed and undone.
There’s part of me that wishes I could just move on and rejoin life and the human race calm and collected, regardless of what memories a sight, sound or smell taps into.
And then there’s part of me that wants the world to sit up and take notice of the ongoing pain and toll child loss inflicts on a parent’s heart.
I’ll be honest, as I’m writing this I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that one of my children is dead.
Oh sure, I can relate the series of events, but in my heart of hearts it is as shocking today that Dominic isn’t coming home as it was on April 12, 2014.
I really can’t adequately convey the ongoing sense that this must be a mistake. There must be something someone has overlooked. Maybe it was all a dream and he will come walking through the door.
I’m not crazy.
I know that Dominic is dead. I saw his body in the casket. I saw the casket lowered into the ground. I visit his grave to change out the flowers.
But I will never, ever get used to it.
All it takes is a smell or a sound or any one of a thousand things that I associate with my third child and I’m transported to that awful morning.
So if you see me tear up, shut down or turn away- let me go.
I just need a few minutes to put my game face back on.
We live in an angry society.
Social media is full of rants about this and that. Television blares raised voices shouting over one another in what passes for news coverage. T-shirts are emblazoned with one-liners intended to provoke others.
We tolerate and even embrace anger as a legitimate emotion.
Yet we rarely make room for mourning. We hide our tears. We shame those who don’t hide theirs as “weak” and “soft” and “cowardly” or worse.
Read the rest here: Anger or Sadness? Or Both?
thelifeididntchoose 