Wednesday's Woe - You're on the Outside Looking In, I'm on the Inside Looking...at Forever!

Wednesday's Woe

You're on the Outside Looking In,

I'm on the Inside Looking...at Forever!

I'm so tired of your list --

Your "Should-Not/Should" list

Keeps me pissed...

If I lived in a Leper's Colony, would...

My civilian peers think THEY know best ~

Would they rant and rave

That I should not live with folks in a cave...?

Would they say I should come over more;

I should no longer hang in that 'hood,

That I'm just becoming a terrible bore...

Or would they assert they know JUST why

I'm in the mess I'm in...

"Why,

you just need to use MY moisturizer on your skin...!"

Then, why O why, do they think...

They can define how to swim not sink

In this new world I find myself in:

This "Child-Loss Griever Untouchables Den"?

So I ask you,

If a wood-chuck could chuck wood...

how much wood would a wood-chuck chuck

If a wood-chuck could chuck wood?

Likewise,

If a non-griever could grieve grief...

how much grief could a non-griever grieve

if a non-griever could grieve grief?

If a non-Child-Loss-Griever thinks he could

Live in a Griever's skin for a day,

How long do you think he'd make it in our 'hood

Without crying out, running away,

Or without sinking under the depressive load

Of sorrow, or of th' angst of his ignorant goad,

"You've lost a child; that's no biggie~

Just move on you big fat sissy!"

He'd be in for another think or two

If he thinks he could swim not sink,

Sopped in such ignorant goo...

So all I can say to these bratty finks

Who sell their wares with nary a blink,

(I could tell them a thing or two

if I could maintain some calm reserve),

Or I could just say what they deserve,

When they come 'roun with their nasty goo,

"Just leave me alone! GO! Shoo, fly, Shoo!"

Picture: Thanks to FotoSearch.com

Poem - Angie Bennett Prince - You're on the Outside-Looking In, I'm on the Inside-Looking...at Forever! - 2/15/2011

Wednesday's Woe- Is my life...a series of Getting-Throughs . . . ? ~Tommy and Angie Prince

Wednesday's Woe

Is my life...a series of Getting-Throughs . . . ?

~Tommy and Angie Prince

I'm not "living" my life, I'm just "getting through . . ."

Getting through holidays.

Getting through birthdays.

Getting through death days.

Getting through holidays...

I told my older son last night (Christmas night), when he was wondering why he hadn't yet heard from us on Christmas Day...

"It's like we're on an airplane, gripping tightly to our seat, just hoping we can 'get through' the flight. We are just trying to 'get through' the day."

He said,

"I completely understand. You don't need to explain that to me. Just remember, I'm a passenger too (on that same flight), sitting just down the row from you."

Graciously, our son understands Grief's Plight....

Most of the "getting through" has to do with relatives:

Can we "get through" this wedding? No. So we don't go.

Can we "get through" a family get-together? No. So we don't go.

Can we "get through" a Christmas gathering of the whole family? No. So we don't go.

Is this my life? Is this my new normal? The "Get Through" approach to life?

Like it or not: It IS what It IS....

Tuesday's Trust - Christmas Reflections: My Child's 5th Christmas in Heaven

Tuesday's Trust

Christmas Reflections:

My Child's 5th Christmas in Heaven

When my child was alive, many times I felt I did not know how best to parent her.

Now I find I do not know how best to grieve her.

Both jobs feel like they are full-time, on-the-job intensive training. And with each "job," I find it holds the intensity of life or death. With such sacred callings, to love and to grieve my precious child, I find I can entrust myself only to my Lord who is Himself, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

This child is a ball-of-energy, full of life, and I find that out of necessity, she challenges me to discover new energies, skills, and friendships which energize and enliven my life...both before...and after...her life in Heaven.

What an impact this precious child and hers-and-my precious Lord have on me. What joy she must feel to see that she so strongly impacts her mommy's life, ensuring her mommy takes up her own energetic pursuit of life and love that brings joy and fulfillment in this life, and even more-so in the life-to-come. Even now, it seems her life invests in mine much more richly than it feels I was able to invest in hers in the relatively short time she was here.

Thank you, sweet baby for loving your mommy even and especially when I hurt, and for being ever-ready with your show-stopping smile when you see me faltering in my deep grief.

It is amazing to me how just your smile can snap me out of the deepest traumatic grief, and transport me into a warm feeling, a smile, and sometimes even a laugh ~ almost instantaneously.

It seems like one of the Heavenly miracles God gives me through you. How sweet He is to share you with me and let you still be a part of my life! That you can bring such uplifting joy into the deepest, darkest grueling grief is truly one of God's greatest Treasures found in the Darkness.

Your smile brings not only joy into my grief, but it brings you and your enlivened spirit back into my life.

Providing ...

A rare glance into Eternity.

A peek into the Unseen.

A reminder of Light that overcomes our Darkness.

Assurance of what I hope for.

Certainty of what I do not "see."

Evidence of the Graciousness of God's Redeeming Love.

Thank You God for this gift of sharing my child with me in spirit, one of the many miracles that Your Son's birth brings to us ~ Your children still on earth, longing for Home!

Picture of Christmas Reflections:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/christmas%20reflections/LynnViehl/ChristmasReflections.jpg?o=15

Wednesday's Woe - "Backwards Land": What to Do with Holidays?

Wednesday's Woe

"Backwards Land":

What to Do with Holidays?

~Tommy and Angie Prince

When our children were little, we played a game with them we called "Backwards Land." Up was down. Down was up. Right was left. Left was right. So occasionally, when our children would come up for supper time, enter the kitchen, and sit down at the table, Daddy (Tommy) would announce, "You have now entered Backwards Land!" The first time this happened, they looked on the table and saw breakfast served instead of supper. In "Backwards Land," they had to walk backwards. They had to talk backwards. For example, they would say "Isn't that a beautiful sunrise today?" when it was pitch-black outside, etc. And so, for the rest of dinner/oops, breakfast, we would play "Backwards Land."

"Backwards Land" was a fun thing to do from time to time. It was a fun time for the kids, and a sweet time for us to watch their creative brains working overtime.

But now? As bereaved parents, we seemingly are living in our own permanent "Backwards Land," where what was once fun and festive is now painful and gloomy.

It seems now holidays have become the worst days instead of the best days for us.

Fortunately, our own surviving children are quite familiar with the new rules by which we must live, and respect those uncomfortable situations that may arise for us and how me must choose to cope with them. They know "Backwards Land," and they understand why Mommy and Daddy must live there for now.

The problem is nobody else around us seems to know the new rules-by-which-we-now-are-needing-to-live though we have repeated them over and over. (Perhaps that is part of living in Backwards Land too - We speak, but nobody seems to hear us!) And that conundrum of folks not accepting the needed-changes-we-must-make-in-order-for-us-to-be-able-to-cope-with-our-child's-death makes for some awkward relationship adjustments.

But you know what, they will just have to "Deal!" ~ Or, as the folks in AA who also have to make major life changes for healthy adjustments to their new life would say so simply,

"It is what it is."

*****

The worst days now are holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter..., birthdays, weddings, (December) 31st--days meant as festivals of happiness and joy now are days of tears.

The gap is too great between day and heart. Days of routine I can manage; no songs are expected. But how am I to sing in this desolate land, when there's always one too few?

~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

There are no rules governing grieving.

Each individual and family have to work out their way to get through it.

That process of finding a route that has the fewest emotional potholes is what constitutes the ongoing grief-work.

The family needs to find routes for itself. Any attempts from outsiders to impose rules rankles.

How can anyone recommend a detour around an obstacle if they have never been down that path?

In any case, suggesting rules heaps guilt and doubt on the shoulders of people who truly don't need any.

~Judith Bernstein, When the Bough Breaks Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter

*****

Right now, Tommy and I don't "do" crowds. But that's okay. I may not go "home" for the holidays, but I do go home to see my mother and I get to spend one-on-one quality time together with her, and it is incredibly sweet for us both.

...Sometimes "Backwards Land" is not really all that "backwards" after all!

Picture - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257869/Upside-house-opened-visitors--just-dont-use-toilet.html