Category: grief journey

Chapter Two: Whose Loss Is Worse?

Grief Blessings2 Comments

Continuing the series…Blogging through “a Grace Disguised” by Jerry Sittser

Chapter Two: Whose Loss is Worse?

In this chapter Sittser tries to open our eyes to what loss is and how we often see a loss as worse or more catastrophic than the other. I found that in this chapter I really came to understand that my multiple losses, no matter the type, have been all different, have all changed me to who I am today. But to say that losing my only daughter has or has not been the worst is a conversation I’d like to debate with the author.

Sittser discusses the many types of loss one can experience over a lifetime. He reminds us as we read about an experience he had as a teen while traveling with his family and while they had stopped during their trip at a gas station he noticed two extremely mangled vehicles. The story told to him made him shiver. Two cars, nine teens playing chicken and nine lives were destroyed in a moment of foolishness.

Even in his own experience of losing his three loved ones in a horrible crash, he often heard from others how people would compare his loss to others. That his loss was the worst they had ever heard of. But Sittser believes, as I do, that a loss is a loss. It doesn’t matter how or why it happened and that no two losses can be compared. Each loss has its own significance. Each loss leaving behind in its wake a devastating and cumulative effect on those whose lives will never be the same.

Sittser speaks about the difference between a lingering loss and one that is quick and immediate. It made me think back to when Brittany was first diagnosed with Epilepsy. The loss I felt then because after doing some research and also having a brother wi th Epilepsy, I knew her life and our lives would not be the one I had forever created in my mind as a girl growing up. The perfect family. That vision, that dream broken, fractured like a mirror falling from the wall onto the floor – never again being whole.

Caring for Brittany over the nearly 18 years was a gradual type of loss, one that is a constant reminder of what will not be. The ebbs and flows of the many years brought moments of joy and sorrow. Disappointment after disappointment left me feeling as if I had smacked down by God for some reason unknown to me. I really felt for the longest time that God was punishing me for something I’d done in my past. To bring upon me such pain was so cruel. But I know now that is not the case. Loss is everywhere you look, and it is definitely not exclusive to just me.

Loss has been an unwelcome visitor throughout my entire life, yet I have learned that you can still get up and dust yourself off and move on. But the one thing I think is the hardest for people to understand is loss changes you. It has made me more sensitive to others who have experienced loss. Yet it has also made me less tolerant of people who don’t understand how blessed they are with what they have. For it can be taken in an instant. It pains me to see mothers and daughters fighting. I just want to say to them “stop it love each other for one day one of you will regret this moment for the rest of your lives”.

Sittser finishes his chapter with this thought and question:

“No one will ever know the pain I have experienced because it is my own, just as I will never know the pain you may have experienced. What good is it to compare? The right question to ask is “what meaning can be gained from suffering, and how can we grow through suffering?”

That is where the author plans to take us for the remainder of this book. I found this book to be extremely helpful in taking me to the next level of my journey in grief and it is my hope that if you are experiencing this journey along with me, you too, will find it helpful to move forward and grow through the experience.

until next time,

m

And now you miss 23

Grief BlessingsLeave a comment

It has been just five short years since my daughter passed away and tomorrow would have been her 23nd birthday. It is the sixth birthday I have had to endure this lump in my throat that comes on the eve of November 30th and stays until I choose to release it.

Her angel date is always difficult, but it’s her birthday that I find extraordinarily difficult to think about. Birthdays represent life, birth a promise of a future to come. One filled of years and years of joy and yes, even some sorrows.

I fought so many years to have her. Suffered from many painful and expensive infertility tests and finally she was born. Even that wasn’t without difficulty. Last minute c-section and a dislocated hip but it was the most joyous moment of my life.

Throughout her life I had to hold on tightly to her as she had suffered from different illnesses from having a bout of encephalitis at 11 months. But mostly we just survived life the best we could. But there was always this nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right.

In looking back the many years of fighting for her rights, her healthcare and her life – it seems as though life was always a battle. But there were also so many moments filled with joy and happiness. Laughter came easily to her despite her many setbacks over the years. She faced life like no one I’ve ever seen.

Perhaps that is why her birthday is the hardest day for me to live through. Each and every one represents a loss so profound in my life because I fought so very hard to have her, keep her and care for her. Every fiber of my being went to be her mother. Her caretaker and she – she was my everything.

As the tears stream down my face, I can’t help but also laugh because she made me laugh. She made me proud to be her mother. She made me a better person. And although tomorrow will be hard. I know she lives on in our hearts and minds. And I will see her again soon.

In the meantime I will continue to honor her life by doing the things I know she loved – loving people.

until next time

m

The End and the Beginning

Grief BlessingsLeave a comment

Chapter 1 – The End and the Beginning

by Jerry Sittser

In this beginning chapter Sittser describes his loss. The horrific tragedy that fell upon him while driving home with his family. His story is gripping and leaves  you with a sense of loss that is beyond my own. But it’s the way he describes his pain that left me with a sense that someone else besides me understood what sudden loss can do to a person. How seeing the one(s) you love die right before your eyes and the feeling of helplessness that is so overwhelming you want to die.

The way he describes his initial experience was much like mine. The shock is so unbelievable that you can’t imagine that such an event has taken place. The flashbacks to the series of events leading up to the loss is excruciating to read because I too had those flashbacks. Reliving each moment over and over again until you fell to the floor in absolute exhaustion crying and wailing because the pain had to come out.

Sittser lost his wife of two decades, his mother and his third born son in a horrible automobile accident. I can’t even imagine what it was like to lose three people for me just losing one, my daughter was so incredibly difficult that the thought of losing three loved ones at once was beyond what I could comprehend.

“I was so bewildered that I was unable to voice questions or think rationally. I felt wild with fear and agitation, as if I was being stalked by some deranged killer from whom I couldn’t escape. I could not stop crying. I could not silence the deafening noise of crunching metal, screaming sirens, and wailing children. I could not rid my eyes of the vision of violence, of shattering glass or shattered bodies. All I wanted was to be dead.” – Jerry Sittser

The above description, although it not my own experience, is very much the feeling I had when I watched as my daughter was being resuscitated for the fourth and final time. I’ve written before about the experience of watching as the hospital staff surrounded her bed on numerous occasion throughout the night bringing her back to life. Yet during the early morning of October 13th 2006, I watched in horror as the nurse climbed up on the bed and was performing CPR while the doctors where shouting out orders to keep the medications going.

All the while I’m looking at the monitors, as a nurse, knowing that what was about to happen next was going to be the worst moment of my life. As my eyes met the nurse who was pumping my daughter’s chest I saw all I needed to see. Her pain, her helplessness and her compassion said it all. As the doctor said to me “she can’t take much more, it’s time to say goodbye” – the words I will never ever forget.

So as I read his description of his flashbacks and reliving the moment. I too relived that moment for so many months. But as time as gone by the violence of it has diminished. But the sorrow that it created is still profoundly real.

One other thing that Sittser reveals about his own first few weeks after his loss that I found to be parallel is that one day you wake up and realize you haven’t cried for the first time. I thought in the beginning that it was a sign I was on the mend, that I was beginning to come out of the gloomy fog I had been living in.

“The tears came for forty days, and then they stopped, at least for a few days….It was only after the forty days that my mourning became too deep for tears.” – Jerry Sittser

At the end of chapter one, Sittser describes what it is like to have your life turned upside down and the choice to move on is the only one. That there is no way to avoid the pain. He called it “suffer and adjust” which is basically what I did. And as I have said before it’s a work in progress.

until next time,

m

A Grace Disguised

Grief BlessingsLeave a comment

I’m so excited to blog through this next book “A Grace Disguised” by Jerry Sittser. As some of my dedicated readers know I have found it rare to find a book that can come close to seeing grief through my eyes. Although our experience of loss is not the same; for his is much more tragic, he chose the right words that so creatively and accurately describes my pain.

I hope you get something out of this series as I did reading his book. I highly recommend it to anyone who has suffered a loss for it offers hope, spiritual rebirth and a new-found belief that the soul can heal and grow through loss.

“The experience of loss does not have to be the defining moment of our lives. Instead, the defining moment can be our response to the loss. It is not what happens to us that matters so much as what happens in us.” – Jerry Sittser

In the beginning of the book the author writes about the previous edition and reflected back over the years of his experience. What I related to most was on page 19 of the book where he talks about writing. I believe as he does that writing about one’s experience, thoughts, feelings, emotions can be healing.

At times during my four years I felt as  if my writing would either make me or break me. In the early days the writing was so porous one could see my pain on the pages of my blog. I allowed many of my readers to “feel” my pain as much as I could. Not because I wanted to bring everyone else down; but to allow you to see that the clichés of the past needed to go about what grieving people need to do or should do. But to allow you to see what’s real about grief.

Sittser talks about being able to read his own journals and was able to see his journey and how far he’d come. How he had changed as a person. He believes as I do that the hope is that our words can bring help to others. But in no way does it diminish our own losses. That our losses are as real and horrible as they were the day they happened.

“The good that may come out of the loss does not erase it’s badness or excuse the wrong done. Nothing can do that.” – Jerry Sittser

So much of what the author writes about in this book has been very validating for me as someone who has suffered so many losses. So it is my hope that you, my dear and cherished followers and any of you who have come upon my blog for the first time, take a moment and reflect that even though our losses have been great. The power to heal resides within  us. It is how we live on that makes the difference between living or just existing.

until next time,

m

Thanksgiving Message

Grief BlessingsLeave a comment

“The single greatest thing you can do to change your life today would be to start being grateful for what you have right now. And the more grateful you are, the more you get.” – Oprah

As I sit here pondering Oprah’s quote I can’t help but think back over the past four years and see the many blessings that have come my way since my daughter’s death. I think a person needs to be able to have great faith to see that and to believe that life can still have meaning after such loss.

I’m a fighter and I always get back up and dust myself off and take another step in faith that God has my back. He has up till now and I have every bit of faith that He will continue to. The problem is always me. I get in the way of my own recovery, my own journey because of my human nature to disbelieve.

To believe that life has handed me so many hurts and sorrows how could life have any meaning left for me. It would be so easy for me to give up to stop believing to stop living. But my faith is so much stronger than my disbelief.

And that my friends is where it begins and ends. So today I am thankful for my faith, for it has carried me this far.

Happy Thanksgiving

until next time

m

A Sorrowful Night

Grief Blessings2 Comments

I won’t lie I did something I haven’t done in a while and that’s I cried myself to sleep last night. You see I’m in that period of the dark times where Thanksgiving is upon us and my girl’s birthday, what would have been her 22nd birthday, follows shortly thereafter. And then there is Christmas.

I was feeling very sad last night as I lie in bed thinking to myself “why is life so damn hard” “why aren’t things falling into place” and “why am I hurting more than usual”. I could have answered those questions in so many ways, yet I just couldn’t seem to find the right one, that is until this morning. But first I must lay the foundation for what is going to happen next and why I think it’s important to move forward.

Just make sure it’s palpable for you to know what it’s like to be me I will try to put it into words for I’m not sure you really understand the gravity of my loss(s). Then I will explain what I intend to do about where I sit now, numb and finding life somewhat meaningless.

The day I said goodbye to my mother was extordinarly difficult. I was seven months pregnant with Brittany and as you could imagine very hormonal. But I was able to put it together and continue on. But underneath that calm exterior I was slowly dying. What I mean is my life as I knew it was no more. I just spent the next two months sitting in the rocker that was in the baby’s room and rocked. Asking God “why”? Then two short months later my sweet baby was born.

Five years later, my grandmother, to whom I was very close was about to die and I was called to her bedside to say goodbye. As I entered the room I called out “Red”, my nickname for her and I was the only one allowed to call her that. She was on a vent and unable to respond, however, I saw a tear stream out of her eye as she attempted to move her head in the direction of my voice. And then she passed.

The nurse there knew I was in nursing school and offered to me a chance to do something she felt would be “healing” for me. I helped prepare my grandmother’s body before she was taken to the funeral home. It was I guess in a strange stort of way a healing process, but still during that time, I found myself silently working and asking God “why”.

Over the next 12 years I found myself asking God “why” so often I was beginning to wonder if he had turned an ear to me. Taking care of my daughter who had suffered a great illness at the age of 11 months and the many side effects from that illness was often too much to watch. Though I asked God often “why” I never really got an answer. I just did what any other mother would do, I care for her, I debated with doctors for her, I fought for her and in the end I lost that fight.

When you watch three of the most dearest people you know and love uncondtionally die right before your eyes – it changes you.

I am not the person I was the day I watched my mother take her last breath as I whispered in her ear that it was ok to go that the baby and me we’d be ok. I’m sick with nausea just thinking about that moment now as I write this.

I am not the person I was the day I watched my grandmother die and helped prepare her body for the funeral home. Knowing that the second most important woman in my life was now gone from me. Now I’m left to be a mother, and a mother of a child with health problems and no mother figure to ask for help. No one to reach out to for help. I just suffered alone.

Then as I watched my daughter suffer from her illness, set back and success, it was all such a roller coaster of emotions. She suffered in school, subject to redicule and bullying so often it would make you want to scream at people and say “what kinda kids are you raising”. But most often I felt helpless and sometimes even hopeless.

Through it all she remained upbeat, optimistic and at times, I thought she’s a better person than I because I would have given up. But no she just got up every morning and with a smile faced a world that didn’t understand her much, or didn’t want her around until she met Carolyn and Andy. They truly understood her and knew what I knew all along – that she was a true gift from God and we were so very fortunate to have her in our lives.

Then that dreadful moment came when I watched helplessly as they tried to revive her for the fourth time in 12 hours. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that is more gut-wrenching than to watch from a distance, yet knowing everything that is happening and understanding that nothing was going to work, but yet praying for a miracle. A miracle that never came.

So now as I sit her today facing another empty set of holidays I have to do something different. I have to get back to what I know works for me and that is reading about triumph over failure. Reading about faith and the grace that it can bring to a sorrowful filled person. I have to get back to what has kept me out of the trenches for the past four years.

What I have been doing is spending too much time trying to make other people happy. To be the “negotiator” of relationships. To appease those around me as if I have been chosen to do that. Because I have not. I’m not here to apologize for anything or anyone. I’m simply here to write out what I know to be true about grief. How it’s torn me from limb to limb and yet I’m still standing.

I have to get away from all the other noise that’s been consuming my life and take care of me. If I don’t – I know this for sure “I will not survive”. I will die of a broken-heart and I don’t believe that is what God has intended for me at this point in my life.

So I have chosen to blog about another book, for it is in this way I can show how and why I have made it from hell and back several times over. And hopefully help a few people along the way.

My next book topic is: “A Grace Disguised” by Jerry Sittser – How the soul grows through love. The reason I chose it is that his words really helped me see that I could keep going and keep believing in love even when it seemed as though I didn’t feel I had the capacity to have love again for the fear of losing it was too great.

Stay tuned…..

until next time,

m

Disclaimer

Grief BlessingsLeave a comment

I’m adding this comment as it has come to my attention that there are some people who read this blog that think this blog is about them. Well it is not. This is a blog about the grief journey of a mother who lost her daughter which profoundly changed her life and it is NOT about the other events that have gone on or are currently going on in my life.

I don’t have the time nor the energy to give that kind of drama a platform that will only encourage more of the same. This blog is simply my pain, my life and my journey and it belongs to no one else but me.  It’s about my grief journey only and nothing more. – mm

Questionable Character

Grief Blessings1 Comment

I have found over the past few years that I have become less tolerant of people who don’t walk the talk. Who portray themselves as good people but really prey on those who are vulnerable. Grieving people are very vulnerable because they lose their “sight” to who is real and who is fake.

When you are in the middle of the grieving process you see life through a clouded haze of pain. Even one, two, three and now four years later some days the fog is so dense I cannot see what is right in front of me. That is when I know that grief has it’s grip on my heart and I have to guard it carefully.

Thankfully I have been given the gift to understand one simple thing. And that is this – when you have been to hell and back numerous times – you see things differently. People can’t hurt you any more because you’ve already been hurt beyond belief by your loss. By how people treated you during and after your loss.

Avoidance is one of the most painful things a griever can experience during the early days. But it can also continue to haunt  you for the rest of your days. That is why it is critically important to surround yourself by “real” people. People who want to be with you because it’s the right thing to do. Not because it feels like a “responsibility” or because it’s the popular thing to do.

I’ve been blessed to have several people who have remainded close to me over these past four years and I cannot express enough my gratitude for that. For their companionship and simply their geniune caring has brought through some very tough nights. Always remembering what time of year it is and how hard the holidays can be for me. Never forgetting that she lived. She walked this earth and she made my life complete.

Then there are others who have walked into my life and walked all over it. They have shown their true colors by behaving in a way that is not worthy of my time. Seriously what is wrong with some people. To think they can manipulate and control people because they are weak or vulnerable – what gives anyone the right to do that to anyone? I’ll tell you nothing gives anyone that right.

The only person that has the control is you, me us – we can say no. No to the people who bring us down and yes to the people who encourage us, who lift us up when we are down and yes to the people to stand with us during the dark times. Everyone else can just move on.

until next time

m

Living a Life of Gratitude

Grief BlessingsLeave a comment
Gratitude
 

What to do when you are faced with trouble. And you know, trouble is always around – lurking, waiting to show it’s nasty little head when we least expect it. It’s how we manage it that will enable us to keep trouble at a distance.

When trouble comes….

Live by faith…

God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. -Psalm 46:1

“You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, “move from here to there,” and it would move. Nothing would be impossible.” – Matthew 17:20

Live by joy…

“Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again – rejoice! “Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do. Remember, the Lord is coming soon. “Don’t worry about anything, instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:4-6

Faith will always be tested, but from that endurance will become stronger so you are prepared for anything.

Never let up the pressure to push trouble away – don’t ever give up.

Live by gratitude…

In everything give thanks.

Even in the midst of trouble, because not everything flows from God.

You have to work at this every day.

Remember: if you are not thankful for what you have today, you will not be happy with what you will attain later.

So the next time trouble comes… instead of dwelling on what you don’t have, be grateful for the wonderful things you do have. Life is too short and we have much to do in our preparation to live eternally in Heaven. Are you ready?

Until next time,

M

Conflicted Spirit

Grief Blessings1 Comment

Some of my readers might find this surprising and then again maybe not; but lately I’ve been feeling somewhat conflicted. Since my daughter’s death I have found that my source for strength has always been God. Especially in the early days of my journey, the bible and God’s word were comforting to me.

But lately I have been so busy with work, with life that I have not stopped long enough to refuel with what I know works. What has worked for me from the beginning of this journey; and that is God. The simple faith that I’m here on this earth for a reason. Not for me, but for the service to others.

My work has become all consuming lately and it’s going to get even worse now. It’s going to take a great deal of discipline for me to say no to certain people and spend more time alone so I can spend the time I need to refuel. Otherwise I will run out of gas. It has happened before so I know the feeling and I’m feeling it now.

I have also come to some understanding of who I am as a person, as a woman and as a child of God. This person is who I was meant to be and was told I couldn’t or shouldn’t be. Yet today it feels so right to know who I am. All these years living a life I was never intended to live has taken a toll on me.

So now I have a choice to move forward with this new outlook. But at what cost? Do I have enough strength to fight off the nay sayers and stand up for what I believe is right for me? I don’t know. But what I do know is that my simple faith is all that is required to move towards peace. And I choose peace.

until next time

m