Category: grief journey

Yesterday was a very bad day. So bad that I wrote a letter to my friends and family. Then I slept for a few hours hoping that I wouldn’t wake up, but I did thanks to some noisy teenagers outside.

Then I went to bed and woke up thinking why the hell am I still here. How can there be any purpose in staying when all around me my world is shattering. I keep doing what I am suppose to do. I pray, I vision, I believe – yet the opposite is what I attract. Why is that.

I was looking in the mirror this morning and thinking how can I do this again. One more day. But I do. I pick it up and I keep going. Funny thing is I don’t why. It’s just what I do. I spend a lot of time asking God if you want to stay and do work – I need energy, I need hope, I need the black cloud that travels over my head to go away.

I speak to God as if he is my best friend, well he is. I remember while reading the book “The Shack” thinking if God truly showed up and spoke to me in the vision I have in mind of who he is, I’d have a heart attack. So instead he sends people, my friends, and some only people I have met via Twitter or Facebook to me and the messages they bring remind me of what questions I have been asking God. Kind of freaky I know.

But what message I got in speaking of my own misery, I received blossoms of love and friendship from many sources. Sources that I wouldn’t have expected. People I don’t know or know well. People I’ve known for a short time.  These people reminded me that I matter. That what I am here for I do not know, but one day it will come to me and I’ll be glad I made it through these rough spots.

Thanks for hanging with me my friends – you know who you are.

until next time

m

For 31 months now I have lived a life that was not as it seemed. I became two people. One for you and one for me. I put on a face for you to keep the pain at a distance. Mostly because you didn’t understand. You couldn’t and I don’t blame you. But it’s been incredibly hard and with all of the other battles I’ve had to fight the energy has left my body and what has remained is a shell of a person. I’ve glimmers of moments where I thought I could make it throuh, but as it turns out – I cannot. I’m tired. The battle has been more than I can bare. The contant incoming attacks have overcome my abilities to see any future worth pursuing. Yeah maybe I could help others, but when you can’t get a break yourself, it’s hard to extend something you don’t have. Tonight I will re-read Job and then I will sleep.

God Bless You all,

Malissa

Ok – so yesterday I stirred up somethings and I though it best I reworded what I said to make it more clear what I’m talking about. It was late and I was tired when I wrote yesterday.

Most people don’t know about my life or how it started. I am not going to go into that now, but it does have a great deal to do with the way I think about things today. Having lost my mother while 7 months pregnant with Brittany was devastating to me. It took me 5 years to get to a place of peace with her death. It was at that time that Brittany was diagnosed with Epilepsy. So I went from one type of grief to another.

When a child gets diagnosed with a chronic illness – it changes the direction of their future. You always wonder how they will turn out, if they will have all their abilities, will they be able to go to a normal school and go on to college. Get married, have children, etc. Then as time passes you realize that some of those things may not happen. The grief that you have carried begins to change again. But you press on and you keep believing that things will get better. And they do for a while.

After Brittany’s death I came to the realization that I would never see my daughter go to college, get married, have children or become the person she wanted to be. Nor would I become the person I thought I would be –  a grandmother. I dreamed of the day that I would become a doting grandmother like my own. On October 13, 2006 that was robbed of me.

So for me, loving someone so deeply as I did my mother, my grandmother and my daughter and having them die creates a sense of equating love with loss. Therefore, that is what I was talking about when I said I didn’t think love was in my future. It’s because losing one more person – well I just don’t think I’d have it in me.

My friends do not worry about me. I’m doing ok – I help others who are grieving and it helps me. But love – don’t know how that fits in the picture. I give love of myself to others in need, but to give love from my heart like the love I had for Brittany – well – it just doesn’t seem possible. The pain is too deep and too hard to bare.

Most of this is covered in much more detail in the book, which should be done by the end of the summer.

More on that later,

until next time,

M

I’m not sure where I stand on love. If you would have asked me before my daughter died I would have told you that I totally believed in love and probably would have told you that I was in love. That I had given my heart to someone. But they crushed it. I didn’t think I was going to recover. Then my daughter died.

That left a huge hole in my heart that I doubt will ever heal. I think it has scared over, but love, I don’t think it’s possible to love again. At least to the level I was able to love before. That capacity has been diminished by the scaring that has surrounded my broken heart.

What saddens me most is when I see people who take love for granted. They treat each other with disrespect, or don’t validate who they are as a person. Some people go through life never really feeling validated or loved. That is so sad. So how do we begin to heal that part of our life. We rely on God. We lean into God and ask for the energy, healing, the trust to love uncondionally again and hope that it can happen again.

I remember as a younger girl loving the movie Love Story. Hearing the words “love means never having to say your sorry”. To me love means “love hurts, love = loss” I have to change that in order to survive. I have to find a way to create love and give love without the worry of losing someone.

I’m ready, I think. But only God knows who and when my time will come.

Love everyone, Hate no one, Accept all, Deny none.

until next time

malissa

I wrote this poem in May of 2007, approximately 6 months after my daughter’s death. On this Mother’s Day it continues to be relevant to my feelings today.

Motherhood in Grief

Where has my girl gone?
For once she was in her room,
laughing on the phone, and
now she is gone.

Where has my girl gone?
For once she was dancing and singing,
loving and laughing at me,
now she is gone.

Where has my girl gone?
For she once needed me,
to fix her hair, pick out her clothes,
show her the way, now she is gone.

Where has my girl gone?
The one that I care for
24-7, 365 days, for 17-3/4 years.
The one who cared so much,
for others, but got so little in return.
Now she is gone.

Where has my girl gone?
Who showed us how to love,
unconditional without barriers.
Who wished to be normal, like
her friends, to be loved.
Now she is gone.

Where has my girl gone?

You see my friends,
she is in the arms of God.
Where she needs to be, she
deserves to be, where she
no longer is subject to the
cruelties of this world.

It is a blessing on this Mother’s Day that I can smile and know she is in the presence of our God who is now her protector, her guide, her love, her life, her everything. She is celebrating her life and before God and as her mom – I’m happy and satisfied she is safe.

As a mother, what more could you want for your child. It’s the ultimate wish. Everything else is selfish!

God Bless All Of You Mothers!

It’s the greatest job in the world and the hardest to give away! I cast mine on the Lord and I can’t wait to see her again!

Until next time,

m

I Can’t Speak

I can’t speak because the pain is stuck in my throat.

I can’t speak because the words are too hard to hear.

I can’t speak because the words make it real.

I can’t speak because when it sounds real and it feels real,

it is real.

until next time

m

I don’t like quiet. I used to love to have quiet. No radio, TV, any kind of noise. Just peace and quiet. Then death came knocking again at my door and took my daughter. No I can’t stand quiet. When my mind is quiet – the Devil talks. I start thinking why am I still trying to make a go of it here. What in the hell is the purpose behind all this loss? When will it be my turn to stop this cruel existence? Still no answer! Did I really think I’d get an answer? Yes! I’m just that bold.

I wrote a poem a year or so ago about the quietness of my house. It’s like death hanging all around. The darkness of my heart draped over a once happy and well-lite heart now keeps me from enjoying quiet. Quite makes me think. Quite makes me cry. Quite makes me wish for the end. Quite is slowing killing me.

I don’t like noise either. I do keep the tv on most of the time because it drowns out the bad thoughts. The painful thoughts. When will those be replaced with happy thoughts. In time I have read that the memories I have that make me cry now, will be less painful as time goes by. I find that hard to believe, but I also cling to that hope.

I lean on God when it gets really bad. As I know it will this weekend – Mother’s Day. I am going to stay very busy and avoid the public and hope that it passes without hearing much about it. Mother’s Day holds nothing but pain and anguish for me. That is my reality – like it or not.

I pray daily for guidance and for mercy. I pray it comes soon.

until next time

m

The one thng grief has taught me these past 2-1/2 years is that it will take you places when you least expect it. And as hard as you fight it – grief always wins. This week while on vacation I returned to a beach in Florida where I took my daughter the last time we visited Florida. This trip to Florida was the first I’d made since my daughter’s death and I believed I have avoided Florida for that reason.

This particular beach is in St. Pete and it is a public area and requires quite a walk to the ocean. As I walked, the memories began flooding back and by the time I got to the water, I was fighting back the tears. I was thankful I had big sunglasses on and not many people noticed me. As I walked along, I realized I couldn’t stay there any longer. The memories are still too painful to see as good, I only see them as time I will never spend again with her. Time stolen from me.

The hole in my heart became painfully present and I felt the need to leave urgently. I walked quickly to the car all the while swiping tears from my eyes. Hoping not to be noticed. At this time in my grief, I usually don’t care who sees me cry, but for some reason this time was different.

I gained some control once in the car and then drove to a beach that I had gone to the day before, one that I hadn’t been with my daughter before. I was thankful for that time, because it was my last day in St. Pete and I didn’t want a sad moment to be my last experience while at the beach.

God has created such a wonderful picture of peace and tranquility that I call the beach. The waves coming in and out and the wind slowly moving through creating a sense of calm. That’s what I wanted to remember, not the pain and huge gaping hole in my heart that will forever remain.

I miss you my dear Brittany more than I can bare some days. And as Mother’s Day approaches I hope and pray to God that I can get past it. This holiday, more than any other, is the most difficult to get through. I tell people jokingly that I’d like to take enough medication to sleep from Friday to Monday and think that it never existed. But I know I cannot. So for all you mothers out there. Happy Mother’s Day. Enjoy your motherhood and your children – they are a gift for such a short time.

until next time

mercedes