Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ammy on September 27, 2013 at 1:23pm

When my son died, the dreams I had prayed for his life and his life with his daughter also died.  My hopes for all of us died.  Many things died and so I can relate to this most recent one I have read.  It is from a grieving Dad.

Two Funerals

A bereaved father wrote, "I’ve often said that there should be two funerals.  Two.  One for our beloved and one for the parts of us that died that day with them.

But I did not die.  Not all of me.  Oh there were certainly times when it felt like I had died or I wished I had died or I wanted to die badly but I did not die.

And in spite of being swallowed by a blackness darker and thicker and more seemingly impenetrable than anyone who has not been there could ever imagine.  In spite of feeling like a hand grenade had exploded on my chest as I continued to stand upright and pretend that “things were getting better.”

In spite of no longer being able to concentrate, or remember, or care really about anything, when I was still, quiet, alone.... a part of me knew I was alive.  Fragile, yes.  Uncertain, yes. Unsteady and confused and bewildered and disappointed and angry and sad beyond words.  And unsure.

But I knew that I was still alive.  And somehow, someway, someday, I believed that resurrection was possible.

My resurrection.

I did not die.

Not all of me.

And neither have you."

*Hugs*

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on September 29, 2013 at 7:14pm

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on October 1, 2013 at 10:09am

After the worst has happened.
With nothing left to fear,
The sun continues shining.
With undiminished cheer.
And winds continue blowing.
And skies continue fair.
As hearts continue bearing
The things they could not bear.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on October 5, 2013 at 10:20am

Easier days do come, but it will always be a part of our lives.  And when you think about it, shouldn't it always be with us.  They are our children.  Can a mother forget her child?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on October 6, 2013 at 11:12am

Do not allow others to rush you through your grief.  

You have the rest of your life to heal and it's a lifelong journey.  

Travel at your own speed.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by dream moon JO B on October 9, 2013 at 4:15pm

i tk a lot of pics coz u cud say my camra is my lifee line it stops me frm lozing it wen my old 1 wnt i had sm money saved u 4or a rainy day so i got my new camra

me mum wnt 2 nth st cst in 8th mnt coz it wz wrm thn now sea his hi tide it is ths is 1 of my favs

im so sory 4 yore losses 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on October 13, 2013 at 4:31pm

Beautiful scene Jo.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by dream moon JO B on October 13, 2013 at 4:48pm

thnx amy it stos me frm lozng it ths pics r evrys lf ln u cud say 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on October 13, 2013 at 5:00pm

I was going through things that I had saved when our son first left us and I came across this song I had saved about 6 weeks into this journey.  It's more of a Christian song, but I found it comforting.  I hope you do too.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on October 15, 2013 at 8:02pm

This is a condensed article that was posted on the Motherlode blog in the New York Times (2010)

Describing Grief

More than once on Motherlode, grieving parents have written about the inadequacy of language in the face of their loss. There are no words to describe the pain of burying a child, and specifically there is no word to label their new, lifelong status. If you lose a spouse, you are a widow; if you lose a parent, you are an orphan. But what about when you lose a child? How do you name something you cannot comprehend?

Katie Allison Granju explored the same linguistic void. As many readers here know, her son died after a monthlong hospitalization for injuries suffered after what appears to have been a brutal beating and subsequent drug overdose. She writes:

What do you call a mother who has lost her child? If my husband had died, I would be a widow, but what am I now? I was the mother of two sons and two daughters — with another little girl on the way. That’s how I define myself. Now what am I? Without my son — to whom I have been “mama” as long as I’ve been an adult myself — who am I? Who will I be in the future when the unholy, unbearable pain that now rips and tears at me every waking minute fades into a more chronic, dull, lifetime ache?

I know that I will be different — forever. Just … different. I can tell you already that losing my child is an experience so profoundly disorienting that I suddenly feel like a Martian among humans.

Yes, I have been rerouted to Mars. And there doesn’t appear to be quite enough air up here.

In the comments on her blog someone left a link to an essay by Karla FC Holloway, an outspoken professor of English and law at Duke University. She has also lost a son, who died at 22 while trying to escape from prison, where he was serving time for a brutal rape.

It was a reprint of an essay Holloway wrote reflecting on a Chinese saying that “the gray-haired should not bury the black haired.” A parent burying a child, she writes, “is an offense to the natural order of things.”

We needed a name because of what happened at Columbine and Virginia Tech, for when a child is found beneath the rubble of an earthquake, or for dusty children who starve to death in Darfur. Our numbers grow daily — with drive-bys and carelessness, with genocides, and accidents, illnesses and suicide.
The word we are looking for, she says, “must be a quiet word, like our grief, but clear in its claim.” The word “widow,” which means “empty” in Sanskrit, is such a word, and that same language, she suggests, provides another for us to borrow: “vilomah.” This means “against a natural order,” she writes. “As in, the gray-haired should not bury those with black hair. As in our children should not precede us in death.”

“The difference between today’s grief and tomorrow’s,” she concludes, “is that now there is a name.

Vilomah. A parent whose child has died.”

 

 

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Connie K on April 28, 2014 at 4:51pm

Thanks Ammy.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ammy on October 17, 2013 at 12:11pm

There are a few things I know about grief. I know that it occupies every level of my being: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, social, sexual. And I know that there are times when I am in a “hit of grief” that it seems like I will always feel this way.
- My body rebels. Pains in my back, knots in my stomach, frequent headaches. I can’t sleep or I sleep too much. I can’t eat or I stuff food down to bury the unbelievable pain. My vision is blurred, and the weight of sorrow in my chest makes it hard to breathe.
- What does this notation in my calendar mean? I’m sure I paid that phone bill. What appointment? I didn’t know we had an appointment! What am I doing in the kitchen? But I thought I just watered the plants. Oh, we’re out of milk and bread again.
- When a wave of grief comes over me, I am knocked over and dragged under the current. Sometimes I am facing the horizon and so I see it coming head on. Sometimes I’m gazing at the beach thinking, “Oh look, it’s just a few feet away, maybe I’ll go lay on the warm sand” and BANG it hits me from behind. The pain explodes in my chest – yes, it really does feel like my heart is going to break. Racking sobs, trembling with fear, seething with rage. Complete and utter exhaustion.
- Sometimes, when my grief is manageable and I can channel all that energy into something positive – I am great to be around. What would they think if they saw me curled up in the fetal position, unable to even get off the couch or with my head stuffed into a bag of cookies?
- I wonder sometimes, why is this happening to me? What does this mean? How can I count on anything? Or anyone? There must be a reason. Searching. Yearning. Sometimes open, sometimes closed down. Reaching out one day – rejecting the next. Crying out, “Oh God, help me!”
- Yes, there are a few things I know about grief. Even though I feel like I’m going crazy, I’m not. This is all normal. For me. My grief and how I manage it is mine uniquely. I’m not doing anything wrong or right. There isn’t a formula or recipe for grieving. Grief is not a disease and there is no cure. All there is is patience and moments of grace and healing. And, thankfully, the gift of being with other bereaved people who understand and accept me in all my complexity and confusion. Thank God for that.
- The gift of healing comes in small and often surprising ways: An unexpected telephone call or email – someone reaching out to say, “I am here for you”. A message that we feel is from our loved one – the snippet of a song, a quote, a smell – a gentle reminder that they are still with me. The comfort of being able to share my true, authentic, self with someone – someone who really “gets it”, who gets me. The look in someone’s eye who has traveled this road and knows the journey is a lifelong one, but is willing and able to walk with me for a stretch of time.
- Amazingly, I sometimes feel like a stronger person. Grief has changed me. Occasionally in my quiet moments, if I listen closely, I can hear the sound of my heart slowly and persistently little by little repairing itself around the hole of loss that is now a part of me forever.

B A Rutledge

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• …
• 9
• Next ›
• Page