Tag: grief

Sudden Separation

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With the sudden separation of accidental death, you were wrenched apart,
and the numbness, confusion, alienation, depression and “walking dead” feelings
that you have now are the result of not being able to assemble a
whole person out of the fragments left behind. – Deepak

 

The above quote from Deepak  Chopra in an article I read recently on Oprah.com really validated on of the many things I’ve spoken about over the past four years about the grief from a single mother’s perspective. Although I don’t necessarily agree with all of his comments he made to this mother, I do feel he has been able to describe in words what I feel I have yet to do.

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/The-Spiritual-Side-of-Grief-Ask-Deepak

The link above is there for your reference to the story of a mother, a single mother of an only child, who dies suddenly. Her story is the one closest to mine that I’ve found that speaks to some of the issues I’ve dealt with or still continue dealing with. I would encourage you to read it and if it resonates with you because you are at that place, try some of his ideas. I plan to.

Although I’m in a place of healing now, it’s going to be a life-long journey and one that I prefer to have God on my side or better yet at my side carrying me when I need to be carried, nudging me when I need to be nudged and lifting me up when I fall down. And finally bringing people into my life that will support me and validate me where I am and not where they want me to be. That is how the healing begins and will continue to flow.

until next time

m

 

 

Grief Hits Hard

Grief Blessings2 Comments

A few days ago I was having a conversation with a dear friend and the topic of grief came up. It just so happens she has had to travel down that long road called grief too. So just with that alone we are “sisters” in grief. We know without saying it; we understand without giving it words; and we feel it because it permates our very soul and oozes out of our pores.

As we talked it became clear that through our conversation about how grief has treated us over the years, even though the circumstances are vastly different, there is an underlying tone of familarity – that is this…..

Grief hits hard, it’s unfair, it makes “low blows” and it doesn’t care when or how it just shows up.

 

After spending some time reflecting about each other’s experiences we hugged and went on our way. I thought to myself “isn’t it ironic that people come into our lives for a season for a reason” and I was just thinking that she was doing that for me. This is what grievers do best – we validate one another through our stories, our feelings and our sorrow. It is real to us – even though our experiences may be very different – the sting of grief is very much the same.

Later the next day this same friend came back to me and said she’d been thinking about what we had talked about. And what I’m about to share with you now my dear friends is what is so badly needed for people who support someone who is grieving, no matter where they are in the process. When you lose someone, especially a child, an only child – it changes your destiny. What I mean is for me my chance to  see my daughter get married has been taken from me. To see my daughter have her own children and for me to become a grandmother – all taken from me. Her death has placed me on a course that I would have never dreamed possible. No one would.

I think when people think of loss they relate possibly to a grandparent or an aunt or uncle. But you can in no way compare the loss of a child, an only child to any other type – as it changes your life’s path so much so – it’s often hard to find your way. The road seems clouded by pain and the journey is very tiring most days. Especially on the days when a friend is about to become a grandmother or a family member is celebrating a graduation or a birthday. Those days are hard because they have been taken from me. From those of us who suffer silently feeling guilty  becasuse we still grieve. Not just the loss of our child, but the loss of who we were to be.

It’s taken me four years to understand that I don’t have to fake it anymore. I don’t have to apologize for the way I feel anymore. It’s ok. I’m moving on, and I’m making a new life for myself. A new journey. But please don’t pretend my loss, your loss or a friends loss of this magnatude didn’t happen. Because the memories will remain both the good and the bad. The dreams lost and the plans cancelled. But love and understanding can conquer it all. You just have to reach out and validate those people who you know who have lost someone. To realize that their memories are still clear to them. And they want, they need to talk about them. For they, their loved one is real to them – even now.

That friend, when she came back she said the very thing I just wrote – “It just occured to me that what you said yesterday about your future – it’s so true – yet many don’t get that”. Truest statement yet to the understanding of the profound loss I continue to feel every single day.

Until next time

m

 

Breath-taking love and heart-breaking pain

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It took me a while to name this blog post. I already had in mind what I was going to write about, but most of the time the title isn’t a problem. It’s not about creating a show stopping headline – it’s about creating a message that reaches out and grabs the very person who needs to read this.

Four years tonight I sat in a PICU watching my sweet baby, who was almost 18 years old, lie quietly in a bed on a ventilator after suffering from a grand mal seizure. I wonder some days if I had known what was going to happen 11 hours later, would I  have handled things differently. I don’t know. But what I do know is that it wasn’t in my control. God was in charge of this outcome.

As I sat there watching her, I remember thinking how are we gonna get out of this one girl. I talked to her constantly, hoping by some miracle that she would respond. It was so hard to sit and wait. To sit and watch and feel helpless. This child of mine, who I loved with such joy, who struggled her way into this world, was now struggling to stay in it. I would every so often sweep her long red hair away from her face and tell her a story about when she was young. Some of the things she would say hoping for some kind of response. There was none.

After a short while things turned ugly and she took a drastic turn for the worse. A code was called and we were told we probably will want to wait outside the door. The nurse in me wanted to stay, but the mother in me knew I had to wait and let them do their work. I couldn’t watch what I knew was about to happen. It’s a hard thing for the body to go through when it is being resuscitated. Hell it’s hard on everyone involved. So as a parent – I don’t recommend watching – it’s a traumatic event and one that you can never totally shut out of your mind.

They managed to get her back and then I took my place again at her bedside and just stroked her arm and head the way a mother would pray for a miracle. Praying she would awake from her coma and say “mom I want to go home”.  After hours and hours of sitting and watching machines make endless amounts of noise. She would move and then the nurses would come in and make her more comfortable.

Then again she became unstable and a code was called again. And again we were shuttled out of the room. This time it took a little more time, a little more medication and a little more of my little girl. I know that because I’m a nurse. Then I really began to pray. This had been the 3rd code of the night. Things weren’t looking too good and I had a bad feeling in my gut that told me what I didn’t want to face. The probability that she wouldn’t come out of this alive.

As a parent, or even better as a mother the love a mother is capable of is incredible. It’s like this vast amount of emotion welled up inside of your heart that bursts every time you see the life that was given to you for such a short time. People don’t get this type of love unless you’ve given birth. But I really don’t think parents get this unless they have lost a child. I call it “breath-taking love”. When I would look at Brittany sometimes I would just think to myself – “God she is just so beautiful and I’m so lucky she is mine”.

But in reality she really belonged to God, and he just gave her to me for a while to care for. To love endlessly and to mold her into the wonderfully funny young woman she grew into being. Without a doubt I couldn’t have been more proud to be her mother. She taught me so much about how people should be more accepting of others. How to pay it forward. How to not be judgmental towards others.  She truly blessed my life beyond measure.

At 6:55 am October 13th I said goodbye to the only thing that ever really mattered to me. My daughter died after complications from a seizure. I walked out a heart-broken mother. An empty shell of a person who has existed for 4 years in this life that I hadn’t planned on. That I would have never planned on.  My life ended on that day. The life I knew. The life I thought I’d have – all gone.

I miss my girl more than I can say. The words don’t even come close to the pain that will always be there deep within my heart from her absence. Some days it’s just plain hard to function. Some days it’s all I can do to just get through the day. My life has been so empty for so long. It’s hard to see the future some days. But I do feel something different now. Life is creeping back. My heart is healing, but the wound is still very raw and at times it feels like it’s going to kill me.

I feel I am capable of letting love back in my life, and back into my heart. I never imagined I’d be able to trust love again. For me love always meant loss of some kind. But I have a faith that is strong and I  believe in a God who wants more for me. Wants me to be who I am supposed to be now. To love again. To feel passionate about life again. To feel like I matter in this world.

So I am here and I am present and I am ready.

until next time

m

Reminders

Her life was my purpose. In forgetting her I begin to lose myself.

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As I ponder my next blog topic I felt the need to write. As some of you may realize I am entering the “dark times” as I’ve so fondly called it. The dark times I have come to know oh so well are the months from September through December. Every August I get the since that the dark times are almost here.

I begin to notice subtle changes in my mood. I become more withdrawn, less social because I don’t want to see all the reminders of what I have lost. When I see a woman out in public having dinner or shopping and she is with her mother – I am reminded that my mother is no longer here with me. When I see a woman out in public having dinner or shopping and she is with her daughter – I am reminded that  my daughter is no longer here with me. And when I see women together out in public with young children, I am reminded that I have lost so much.

I keep a picture of my mother on my dresser. It’s one of my favorites. It is from a family picnic from long ago. It is a four-generation picture of my great grandmother Lovina, my grandmother Martha, my mother Judie and me. I treasure it for it reminds me of the great women I have had in my life that are now gone. The sorrow of their absence in my life overwhelms me.

I also keep pictures of my sweet girl Brittany. I have them at work, and pretty much in every room in my home. I had once entertained the thought of removing them because seeing them brought such pain, more pain than joy. But I have now come to a place that I can see them and smile. But this time of year it’s more difficult to hide the pain. More difficult to smile. Because the emptiness is so very present.

I have saved some very special treasures that I keep in a cloth covered storage box that is about 3 feet long by 2 feet wide. It contains some great memories of my daughter. I have her American Girl doll from our trip to Chicago that we made one summer with another mom and her two daughters. It was a fun time. The doll she picked was the one where they designed it to look like her. So yeah it reminds me of her. I placed Brittany’s christening dress on the doll and laid her upon Brittany’s baby blanket which my mom began to crochet before her death. The one I found sitting behind her chair after her funeral. I finished it just in time to bring Brittany home again.

Some of the other things in the box are Brittany’s favorite blanket, her stuffed bear from Andy, her boyfriend at the time of her death and several photos. But the most difficult thing that box for me to see or hold are her glasses. Shortly after her death I picked them up and felt such a feeling of sorrow – it was unexplainable. All I knew is that I could somehow feel what she saw before she had her seizure. It was as if I could feel her pain or her aura before the seizure took her away from me. To this day I cannot pick them up without experiencing that horrible feeling.

I keep that box out of my sight for it brings more pain than joy – but on October 13th I open that box and let the sorrow take over – it is my way of letting the whole year of missing her flow out of me. I feel so alone during this time as I cannnot share it with anyone. No one can possibly understand this type of pain unless you’ve lived it. Yeah I can move on, I can work, I can laugh and enjoy life, but this small part of me – it’s never leaving. It’s always there and it’s always haunting me.

I have the most precious memory book I created that helped me throughout the first two years after her death. Don’t get me wrong it was so very painful to sit and look at pictures of her during such happy times. Knowing I’d never see her again. But I am so glad I took the time and created such a book. I can now look at it and share it with others in hopes that we don’t forget her. To my dying day I will not let her life be forgotten. Her life was my purpose. In forgetting her I begin to lose myself.

So my dear friends, the dark time is about to arrive and I ask you to pray for me, to love me and to understand that this to shall pass come January 1, 2011.

Until next time

m

Empty Nest

Tears will fall, floods will come but so will joy.

Grief Blessings1 Comment

In doing some research for my book I came across a print out from The Compassionate Friends, an organization who supports those who have lost loved ones. In that article it addressed an area of my grief that I struggle with even today. What made me think about it was recently I also had read an article by a mother who was mourning her daughter’s move to college. She felt lost and alone and unsure of what she was going to do with her time. And I thought to myself – we have so much in common, yet there is a place where that commonality takes a fork in the road. That fork starts a path no parent wants to travel.

The article from TCF addresses parents who are now childless. As I read this for the first time, tears streamed down my face, because for once during my grieving period someone wrote what I was feeling. I thought no one could possibily understand what it was like to feel my future slip away, or at least the one I thought I was suppose to live, had been ripped from me.  I questioned so many times, “who am I if I am not a parent” “who am I if I am not a mother” – I was utterly lost in my own identity. I felt empty and alone and the hole in my heart seemed as if it would never recover.

This article gave me a small rope to cling to. The words “Ultimately, however, we realize that we are forever parents.” were the words I needed to hear.  I remember thinking – “finally someone gets it” – until I got asked “the question”. How many children do you have? The first couple of times I was asked by an unsuspecting person, I would just hang my head and say quietly one and then walk away from their bedside, to hide the tears that quickly flooded my eyes. As time went on, that question would continue to come, and with each level of grief I would answer it differently. Sometimes I could tell if the person that was asking could handle me saying “one, but she now lives in Heaven” or I would just say “no”.

Saying “no” was in a way betraying Brittany’s existenace so I stopped that and just became comfortable with saying I have a daughter and she has passed on. I came to a place where I could even smile while saying it. That is real progress.

So often my well meaning family, friends and co-workers would try to offer a word of comfort by saying “try and focus on what time you had with her” or “try not to look back and look toward the future” – can I just say I wanted to belt them a few times. But I knew they cared for me and were just trying to help. But let me tell you if you are in this place, you may feel, like I did, that it’s hard to find a way to focus on the future when it looks very empty. I won’t deny that for one minute, but it does get better. The fact doesn’t change, it’s the way you look at it that changes.

You begin to see the blessings and not the grief that has held you hostage for so long. The trip is a long one and it seems as though some days you move one step forward and three back. Eventually the steps forward begin to out number the steps backward. That is the hope I offer you today.

If you are early in your grief, move into it, lean into it and lean into God. Move through your grief and let it take you where you need to go. Tears will fall, floods will come but so will joy. When joy returns your memories will make you smile and sometimes with a small tear – a sign that you will never forget.

until next time

m

Sunday

What it feels like to have Mother’s Day in my face.

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It’s raining today – AGAIN! Seems as though we’ve had our fair share of rain this month. I don’t know about you, but I’m quite tired of it all. I’m believing for some sunshine linked by several days of continued sunshine.

Now that my taxes are done, and oh did I owe, I’m getting back to finishing my book. I don’t have much left to do. But it does seem a bit disorganized and needs some polishing. Writing has never been one of my fortes but after much prodding by my peeps (friends who have read my blogs over the past two years) I have decided to pursue it.

Some days you just have to pull yourself up and push on. Even when it doesn’t feel good at all. But I’m a believing person and know God has not set me upon this earth do live a dull and meaningless life. Even considering the great loss of my only child.

The next few weeks you may find my writing here a bit dark. Mother’s Day is coming and it’s not usually a good time for me. Many of you know that I lost my mother when I was 7 months pregnant with Brittany. My mom was only 48 when she died from Breast Cancer. Five years later, my grandmother died of Congestive Heart Failure. Then losing my daughter nailed it shut my ever celebrating Mother’s Day again.

I don’t want to take away anyones love of Mother’s Day – but just know there are some of us out here that wish it would just go by and never breathe it’s breath of heartache over my life again. But it’s all around – you know – every store, every TV show and even in church. I go to church regularly because it’s how I get spiritually fed, however, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are not Sundays I attend church. I choose to stay out of the public on those days, not because I am a recluse, but because I’m tired of having those holidays shoved down my throat.

It’s a painful reminder of what I have lost or been without for so long. For my dear friends and family the magnitude of many losses have profoundly changed who I am as a person. I will forever be different and you will have to learn to be OK with it. I don’t like it much either but it is my reality.

I choose to do a lot of positive things to counteract my losses, but it doesn’t take them away. It doesn’t soften the blow, it doesn’t decrease my pain – it only creates noise in my life to take up the quiet that drives me crazy. When it’s too quiet – I weep.

More on that later.

until next time

mercedes