Wednesday's Woe - The Curse of the "If Only"s, ~by Tommy and Angie Prince

Wednesday's Woe

The Curse of the "If Only"s

~by Tommy and Angie Prince

Soon after Merry Katherine's death, we were overwhelmed by the "If Only"s and the "What If"s. We would ruminate, over and over assaulting ourselves with "If Only" behaviors we could have done that might have led to a completely different outcome, an outcome that included her being alive…  

I remember one of Tommy's was, "If only we had duck-taped her to a chair when she was so determined to on on that beach trip…"

Now he says, "If only I had been in control, the way I had thought I was…"

~The "If Only"s~ How prevalent these were early on, but thankfully they do recede. Not completely. But they do recede. (Yet just this morning I was hit with an onslaught of them… It seems I barely survived them, but lost a lot of sleep in the fight. And such a lack of sleep often seems to just feed the problem, creating even more "If Only"s in the days to come. What a vicious cycle they can create!)

"If Only"s do a wonderful job of 

• Suppressing your appetite,
• Getting a terrible night's sleep, and
• Raising your blood pressure to a dangerous level.

I wonder if that's our emotional psyche's attempt at finding comfort, yet the effect often seems to be that of working ourselves up into such a frenzy that we are barely able to function!

How about you? How do you do when you get hit with the "If Only"s?

Picture, thanks to Google Image

Wednesday's Woe - The Secret Life of Child-Loss Grievers ~By Tommy and Angie Prince

Wednesday's Woe

The Secret Life of Child-Loss Grievers

~By Tommy and Angie Prince

Tonight, Tommy and I watched the wonderful movie, The Secret Life of Bees (2008) based on Sue Monk Kidd's classic novel, The Secret Life of Bees. (You must check it out if you haven't already! It had me tearing up, and outright crying many times.) One of the quotes brought to our minds the hidden life of us child-loss grievers, so I will start with that quote, and then transform it to fit us child-loss grievers.

Also, I am right in the middle of reading a wonderful book about grief, a book called Companion Through the Darkness: Inner Dialogues on Grief, written by a writer and widow, Stephanie Ericsson. I close the post with her poignant quotes about our "secret" life.

But first, we would say to the child-loss griever:

The river of sadness is constantly running through you. ~ Like a river, it ebbs and flows, sometimes as quiet as a small pond on a windless day. At other times bubbling up to the surface, just enough to get your attention, but high enough to disturb you. At still other times, it is overflowing its banks like in a tumultuous storm, potentially threatening to overtake you. But, whatever its rhythm, the river of sadness, indeed, is constantly running through you.

*****

"People have no idea about the complicated life goin' on inside a beehive . . . See, bees have a secret life we don't know anything about."

~from the movie, The Secret Life of Bees

We would say,

"People have no idea about the complicated life goin' on inside a Child-Loss Griever. . . . See, Child-Loss Grievers have a secret life the outside world knows nothing about."

*****

And from Stephanie Ericsson,

"We who grieve are exiled in our society. Exiled by the turning away of a face so that they do not witness my agony. Exiled by the silence left as friends and family drift away. Exiled by the lack of recognition of this universal experience. Soon enough we sit in solitary confinement feeling as if no one else has ever felt what we feel."

Then she imagines herself speaking to those civilians to our grief war:

"Because You!--who have not lost what was everything to you, You!--who have never touched the flame, You!--who are afraid of the dark, You!--will come soon enough to the edge. Listen carefully--Your time will come. Your denial (by condescension) of my state of enlightenment/annihilation/rebirth is your way of saying you will not jump into the chasm until you must.

"You have, however, deserted me. I stand alone in your abandonment. Alone in my singularity. Alone in the most important passage of my life. I am going on, past death. A widow friend said, 'I don't take a single thing for granted now!' Her teeth were clenched the same way I find myself clenching mine in resistance. We are vigilant guardians of what is important and what is a waste of precious time."

Picture: thanks to FotoSearch