Getting Through the Days "In Between"

     Those terrible "marker" days that occur on birthdays, death anniversaries, and holidays eventually become less painful as years pass. We may still be taken by surprise when we feel that same pain at a wedding, a funeral, a graduation, or any other event in which our child will no longer participate in this life, but the grief is containable, and there are all those ordinary days - every one of them that occur.
     I remember the high school graduation that would have occurred for our son with the shortest life, if only...  Another mother was there whose son would have, should have also graduated. The two of us stood out in the halls, peeking through doors, crying. We saw one another but we were not together. Neither of us wanted to ruin the day for our children's friends, we didn't need to hear words of comfort. We just wanted to see their classmates graduate.
     As the years pass, grieving parents are usually grateful to those marker days, because we feel we have greater social permission to mention our children that died. We think of them every day, They permeate nearly everything we do. But we believe that other people will understand we have important memories when we use those birthdays, death anniversaries and holidays to mention the names, to share a little story.
     Sometimes we step out of line and call attention to our grief on days that aren't markers. For several years, I brought an enormous plant to church to mark our child's upcoming death anniversary. The plant would remain until the next church holiday season, and then I would remove it and plant it outside. There would be a printed acknowledgement that the plant was from my husband and I in memory of our child, but that didn't matter to me. I just liked the silent tribute.
     One year as I prepared to take the plant home, a woman that attended church once in a while told me that the "plant thing" was getting tiresome, and that I should get over it. The next year she asked the person in charge of flowers to call me ahead of time and say that someone else had been asked to decorate the church.
     Two things happened after that. First, I knew that I didn't really have to create another tradition for memorializing our child. Second, the lady who called me (and who was quite old), approached me in many years later, just after our other son died. She told me how sorry she was that she had followed the critical woman's demand, and that she really would like it if I would forgive her. I already had. I knew it had been done against her better judgement. I told her that perhaps it was better if that other person felt good. I saw no reason to draw attention to myself.
      The forgiven woman has died, the critical woman lives on and never attends church. I don't need to see the plant. I know that my son with the shortest life, as well as his brother, continue to be remembered for their good thoughts and kind actions toward others.

Happy Sad People

I don't know whether I am a happy sad person, or a sad happy person. I suppose it does not matter. It occurred to me this past month that I will never be happier than I was at sometime in the past. Of course I am happy, but any happiness forthcoming will always carry the knowledge that both our sons have died. We have a fantastic daughter and son-in-law, a wonderful daughter-in-law and four grandchildren, all of whom can be described with superlatives. But we don't have our two sons.

Maybe I'm feeling melancholy because next month will be two years since our older son died, and all our family members are slightly anxious about the anniversary. I could be melancholy because in less than two months will be the birthday of our younger son. Although he died almost 25 years ago, the memories are still bright and clear. He has been gone from life much longer than the length of his life.

Birth and death anniversaries take us back in time, and the memories are not only the lives that were lived, the include the time that surrounds the deaths. I remember 25 years ago, knowing with clarity that our son had died, even before he was identified in that damaged car. Whether that knowledge was the only conclusion that I could reach given the circumstances, or whether it was intuition, I cannot be certain. I just know that I knew.

On the other hand, I was shocked that our older son died. I watched him lying motionless as medical staff turned off all of the machines that had sustained his vitals while doctors tried for 3 days to save his life. The machines had finally all failed to sustain him, sending out alarms that response was not occurring.

I think I would prefer not having those memories that surrounded their deaths. The other memories, however, are wonderful. I remember the moment our older son was born, after 20 hrs. of labor, with a pointed head, red face, and screaming in anger. I remember when our younger son was born, after 20 minutes of labor, with a round little head, chubby cheeks and the prettiest pink complexion imaginable. He cried for about 30 seconds and then followed his first breath with a deep sigh.

They were alike, they were opposites. They were creative, but in totally different ways. The older would imagine his toy cars driving in unique ways or to incredible destinations. The younger would simply take off his shoes, put his hands in them and "drive" them around the room. Our youngest, our daughter, was the perfect median between her two brothers. Over the course of her young years, she was the playmate of the brother closest to her in age. As an adult, her older brother became her best friend, second only to her husband.

I'll never again have the experiences of having children, of watching them learn and interact.  I got to watch our younger son grow and blossom. I got to watch our older son grow, blossom, and establish a life of his own.  Our daughter remains, and she and her family have made us proud and happy and will continue to do so. Our daughter-in-law and her family are gifts to us that are better than we ever imagined.

Our happiness lies in what remains. It will always be tinged with what is gone. We have already touched the top of an arch, and we remain near the top because we were given so much love. To my amazement, it is almost enough.

The Path Through Grief

            Taking the time to grieve is a concept I find somewhat confusing and somewhat simplistic. Someone might say "Have you taken the time to grieve?" or "Are you burying your grief?" The questions imply that one can turn grief off and on according to one's priorities. From my own experience, grief has a timeline that is unpredictable.

            If a person hides grief emotionally, it might be present physically, or even intellectually. I've known bereft people who speak of feeling nauseous and there is no physical diagnosis, grieving women who enter menopause or begin the symptoms of menopause at a very early age, or people who develop migraines immediately following a death. After the death of each of our sons, my attention span became very short, and often I couldn't complete a train of thought, particularly if it was important.

            Grief means tears, and it also might mean depression. Grief is work. More importantly, grief is life-changing, but it is not life-ending. It is an injury from which we must recover to the extent that most of the pain is gone. We will have adjusted our lives to any limitations grief might have caused. We will, thankfully, have an emotional scar to always remind us of what we have lost and what we have survived.

            Swallowed by a Snake by Tom Golden is a helpful guide to the manifestations of grief and the approaches to grief healing. In his book, Golden uses the folk tale of a man swallowed whole by a snake and that man's endeavors to escape. Golden refers to "the masculine side of grief" in the book, but does make it clear that women and men alike incorporate both masculine and feminine approaches to procedures, but perhaps to different degrees.

            The book makes it clear that we must work through grief actively. Allowing regret and sadness to control our inevitable passage through grief is not as likely to have the healthy result as working through the journey. The escape from the snake was accomplished by the swallowed man eating his way out. While that seems grotesque and of course difficult, so are some of the things we must do to escape debilitating and destructive clutches of bereavement. The escape from the snake was not immediate. It took a very long time. The passage through grief does not take a few weeks, it takes months, even years.
             Most importantly, the passage through grief doesn't end with a complete return to who and what you once were. It is merely a progression, often without completion. The result of the progression is that we are able to continue to live our lives.

            The work of grief varies from one part of the world to another. In at least one culture, loud wailing is a part of the grief journey. In some cultures, the spirit of the one who died wanders nearby for a year, during which time his family leave gifts of food and trinkets that the loved one might enjoy. In some cultures, the immediate burial of the body is important. 

            In our culture, grief is often solitary and generally dismissed as a few days of personal leave. We plan the funeral or memorial event, we choose a plot or an urn. We contact family and friends. We look through photos of past occasions and perhaps even select some for a video. We tell the story of our loved one's life, giving information for an obituary. We go through our loved one's possessions, putting some or all of them back where they were, placing others in a container for storage or donation. We plan the events of the first year or two (or three or four): Birthdays, holidays, memorial events, recognitions. We talk about our loss. We remember and remember and dream. In other words, we must do tasks related to the death in order to move through the grief.

            Those are merely the actions we do that other people observe. We must do more. We need to speak our loved one's name. we need to continue in our previous role for at least a little while. We need to do things to preserve our loved one's memory. We need to review our memories, contemplate our future without our loved one, and share our feelings with those close to us. Some people join a support group, some write a journal, others write and post pictures on social media, still others make scrapbooks or photo collections.

            Some grievers find specialized projects. A person handy with a sewing machine might choose to make a pillow or quilt out of articles of clothing of the loved one, other's might design a garden memorial. Whatever you do in remembering the person that died is a way of working through grief. Finally, grief counseling will help those who find the above attempts inadequate to a life without emotional pain.  

            At the end of the journey, the pain will be less and perhaps eventually alleviated. The memories and recollections of the person who died will continue to be vivid. More importantly, you will have the knowledge that your life can go on, you can be a contributor to the lives around you, and you will have survived the deep dark tunnel of despair.

Minus Mother's Day

I am so sorry for those mothers (father's too) whose only children have died. When our first child died, I one day realized that the only thing worse would be to have two children die. Now I realize that some parents lose all of their children, and perhaps also their spouse, in various accidents and horrible incidents.

I am fortunate to still have our grown daughter and her family, my daughter-in-law and her family, and my husband. But I have mixed feelings about Mother's Day.

Mathematically, I had three children, so I was the mother of 3. Now, two have died so am I at the minus 1 level of motherhood? Of course I know better, but sometimes I think that is how others perceive me. Do others think I am missing a part of my mothering because my children died?

What I have tried to explain to people sometimes is that I am still the mother of my sons. I look after them when I drive by their graves, I help them by trying to maintain their memories for others, I enjoy them by remembering all the wonderful and not-so-wonderful things about them.

"Happy" Mother's Day doesn't exist for me. That would be like being thrilled about a well-worn limousine. But it does exist for others, including my offspring that are still on earth, so I will not refute the words to them.

Maybe those of us who are mothers bereft have more motherhood in us than those we and others are led to believe. After all, we know what it's like to grieve for our children and to continue to love them even when they exist only in our hearts.

Thankfully, The Tears Never Really Stop

      I try to be a happy person and usually succeed. Nevertheless, every day there are times that I am on the brink of tears. This started nearly 25 years ago when our 17-year old son died. I might be alone, I might be with friends, or I might be sitting in front of the entire church ready to play an introduction to the next hymn. The moments at the edge of crying are fleeting, however, and I don't think others notice. It's not that I am disturbed by the rush of sadness. It is that I am aprehensive that other people will not recognize my grief, and will consider my sadness to be hurt about something current.
      Of course I don't know for sure, but sometimes I believe that people think I am a happy person, perhaps even a silly person. Perhaps there are people who believe I am unfeeling or even shallow. I am aware that I might possibly portray those characteristics, but I am comforted by the hope that I am viewed in more positive ways as well.

      Daily events and people stop the tears from erupting. Happiness and joy, and sadness and grief are not necessarily opposites. A griever can be happy in one context and sad in another. He or she can be grieving and joyful simultaneously when faced with a loved one’s death; grieving that the loved infant, child, or adult no longer exists, but joyful that they are remembered.

      We who grieve seek solace, but we don’t necessarily seek an end to grief. Other people tell us they hope we find “closure,” “resolution,” or “acceptance” and we are taken aback. Deep within us, these words imply the loss of memories.

      Grief and joy are not exclusive of one another. Although for a while, joy might end when grief begins, grief does not end when joy begins. The two terms define the content of life itself.

       Emotions and feelings might be better understood as colors in a spectrum. Those colors may be arranged according to hue, with grief at one end of the spectrum and joy at the other, but the hues start moving randomly within the spectrum, forming new colors and new learning. They may also be blended in such a way that they are tempered and reduced in intensity. The spectrum is always changing, but when movement slows down, each individual should try to perceive that singular slowly changing portion that is pleasing and contains both grief and joy specifically for her or him. That is the portion of the spectrum we can call peace.

Not Getting a Handle

      Never again will I be the "happiest I've been." That's the bad news.
      But the good news is that the majority of every day (and night) is spent in memories.
      The memories that are always there are the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
      My 3 children all charmed me.
      My 2 boys pulled me into their humor and thoughts.
      We remember Jed, the oldest, would pull himself up to a piece of furniture, point to something he wanted and say, "Do!" He was able to communicate "give me water," "hand me that," "feed me" or any number of other things just by saying, "Do!"
      Jed, like his brother and sister that followed, started talking at 8 months. Jed, however, would crawl up to things. If they were things on an end table or low shelf that he shouldn't touch, my words would be "No. Pretty." After a little pointing and some checks to see if I was watching, he'd crawl away.
     One day, as he approached a small dish on my friend's end table, I said, "No. Pretty."  He said, "No. Tree!" and then he fell onto the floor in giggles. He was using his sense of humor, and the same joke continued for several weeks.
       Jay D. also had a sense of humor, but what I remember most is his use of words. One day during flu season after I took his temperature, he kept insisting on something and neither my husband nor I could figure out what he was saying. He, a little over 2,  suddenly blurted, "You two big guys just don't understand." After more questions, we finally figured out that he wanted us to give his temperature back.
       About a year after that, he informed me that he decided to learn a new "hard" word every day. By the time he was in high school, I sometimes found myself running to the dictionary to look up a word he had just used that I pretended to comprehend.
        As people do when they age, I found I really enjoyed a little nap after work. By then, Jed was in college and the other two were in high school. I would be on the sofa sound asleep and Jay D. would come up and excitedly shout "Mom!" Without fail, I would nearly jump off the couch. Then he would smirk and tell me whatever little thing was on his mind.
        For several years after he died, I would be awakened by his voice shouting "Mom!" I always found myself smiling as I went back to sleep.
        My own experience of being the mother of two children that died is that the death of the second is as heart-rending as the death of the first. The initial shock is devastating. It is just as painful, and it is just as sad. I now shed tears for two sons, not one. I consider what each son is missing that will be fulfilled by their own friends and classmates. I am a little irked with both of them that they have left the closing of our own lives entirely to their sister, without any guilt at all.
         Perhaps the first death taught me that I will always feel their presence. Perhaps I have internalized the fact that they are now mine "on demand." I can remember them and call them to my mind any time. Perhaps I fully expect either of them to come to me without request, but in my dreams and daydreams. I know they love me, just as they know I love them. I will continue, always, to be their parent.
         Still, I wish they were here breathing on earth.
     

"Merry" Christmas

       "Merry Christmas!" I have learned to accept the good intentions of my friends and to echo the words back to them, even though I know that my Christmas won't be exactly merry. Some of it can be pleasant, happy, or even joyful. At its best, each Christmas will have moments of sadness and reflection. Being merry means being in a jovial state, and I don't think I'll be spending any long tenures being merry.
        The first Christmas after our first son died was absolutely devastating. I also cringed, and probably visibly, whenever anyone wished me a merry Christmas that year. The second year was better and finally I settled in to acceptance of the good intentions of others. Last Christmas, the first one after our other son died, was also very difficult, and this year is somewhat better. Perhaps this year was better because of predictability.

        I would like to understand how "merriment " came to be a part of the recognition of Christmas. The song "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" shouldn't be the basis for the word because it obviously had a different meaning with the song's origin. "God rest ye merry" is obviously archaic, and of course it doesn't wish ladies anything at all.

       I won't be merry on Christmas. I think I'll be okay. I know I'll be happy and will laugh and enjoy the day, complete with its sadness and reflection.

        Most people who say "Merry Christmas" to me know they are wishing me not merriment, but rather the best kind of Christmas possible for me. I am grateful for their sentiment and attention. Others come up to me, and then realize that they aren't comfortable wishing me a Merry Christmas. Usually I just get a hug. I am grateful to them for their sensitivity, and words aren't always necessary.

         But this "Merry Christmas" thing could be examined in more depth. Why do we think everyone should have a merry Christmas? It's not biblical, although being joyous is. Joy, however, is more complex, and to me it includes memories, and hope that is most profound. I am not a theologian, but I have no recall of anyone supporting Jesus that insisted on a party or a day of merry-making.

         I, in fact, have been wondering about the celebration of Christmas as the birthday of Jesus. The angels, visiting wise men and shepherds all celebrated His birth, but there is no mention in the Bible of celebrating His birthday on an annual basis. Of course, we celebrate birthdays as part of our culture today, and even recognize the birthdays of historical figures, so I'm not recommending excluding Jesus. But we don't know when Jesus was born, although it was probably sometime toward the end of the vegetation year, when people could travel for census-taking. We don't know what the date was, but the season of winter would not be the same in Bethlehem as it is in most of the United States. The calendar designation of Christmas was set to coincide with harvest festivities that are not specific to any particular climate.

         What we need to observe is the gift of Jesus not just one day, but every day. W e need to celebrate the lives of our children with all of our family and friends, those living and those who have died. Bereaved parents may or may not have a merry Christmas, but they need to reflect love and promote peace every day in remembrance of their children, and if they are Christians, in the model given by Jesus.