Wednesday's Woe - Which Is More Cruel? ~Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

Which Is More Cruel?

~Tommy Prince

It's come a time when we need to change out her bedroom…

Which is more cruel?

To leave her belongings out to ever remind you she's not here and each of those items could trigger you, or

To go through her things one by one, touching every item with its reminders of her: how she used them, read them, or wore them, etc. while she was here…with you…when life was normal?

Even if Plan B is the better option, good luck getting it done, and staying in one piece to do it.

Risk ~ if you leave belongings in place and you pass by them, you may or may not get triggered. But boxing her things up, having to touch all of her things guarantees you will get triggered…

Wiping tears and blowing your nose every few minutes slows you down, but you bear with that to get through.

The thing that got me was the high school graduation class tee-shirt with everybody's names on the back, and there was her name along with everybody else's …who are… all... still here…

Wednesday's Woe - "Look What You Can't Have!" ~Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

"Look What You Can't Have!"

~Tommy Prince

Just before awakening this morning, I dreamed about Merry Katherine… Cruel and inhuman punishment. It's like going to a funeral over… and over… and over.

In the middle of the dream, what happens is, I am felling a sense of well-being. This is the way life is supposed to be… She is here---at home where she is supposed to be---just getting her things organized.

There's an abruptness to it when I wake up. It's like we've talked about before on the blog ~ It's like going to the starting blocks over and over and over… Revisiting that whole thing of, "She really isn't here anymore." And because of that abruptness, it takes me several days just to get back to the functioning level.

One of the many things Merry Katherine and I had in common was a love of good music. In the dream, we were just going through some c.d.s --- I found one that was hers.  

"Here, do you want to listen to this?"  

A normal occurrence that was so refreshing because it was so normal. 

I awaken only to discover I'm thrown back to Square One.

It's as though, like cancer, my trauma and pain goes into remission temporarily, and then it comes back out ~ with a vengeance.

It's like a 

"Gotcha! Look what you can't have!"

Like with Angie…  

She sat down yesterday to have her coffee, and the house was empty. Peace and Quiet. And all of a sudden, the grief surfaces, and eight kleenexes later, she's in a pile, in touch with the abject reality of missing her baby, all over again. (That is the state she was in as she wrote the poem she  put in yesterday's blog post.)

Just now, as she's writing this post, her tears are flowing again; the kleenex come back out. The unbearable pain surfaces as she relives the normalcy of having our baby "back" even as she hears the details of my dream. 

Again, the gut-wrenching tears flow, as if, like a mine-drilling, it's like the "oil" gushes up from the heart of her soul, as her heart and soul dredge up a tiny portion of their pain. . .

It's time to go back to bed. 

Oh wait, now the bed is not a sanctuary for me… Lately, just trying to get rest is the source of my pain!

Whether it's sitting down to the quiet, or having the space in your life to have dreams, it seems our grief will "out"… one way or another. This is a snapshot of grief at six years…

Wednesday's Woe Weeping and Gnashing ~Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

Weeping and Gnashing

~Tommy Prince

Scripture's description of Hell...

"They will throw them into the fiery furnace, 

where there will be 

weeping and gnashing of teeth."

~Matthew 13:42

We survived Thanksgiving by being extremely low-key. Literally shutting all the doors, closing the curtains, and turning off all the phones. But, for a Child-Loss Griever, what happens when you have peace and quiet? Keep everybody away... and the grief surfaces. I didn't know how much until my nightmare yesterday morning… 

Hope for our daughter…

Emotionally, we were forever expending energy, trying to help her. Angie and I spent all our emotional, and much of our physical energy, trying to save her from herself...

“Last forever!' Who hasn't prayed that prayer? You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying.” 

~ Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The Nightmare that Never Goes Away…

I awakened yesterday morning from a nightmare. When I awakened from my nightmare, I didn't experience the typical response of, "Thank goodness that was a dream and not real life!" Usually my nightmares would consist of the typical, 

"I'm on a trip somewhere but I can never seem to find my destination; I am lost." 

Or, 

"I've got an exam coming up in a college class, but I haven't even studied for it." 

…so that, when I wake up, I can breathe a sigh of relief: 

"O, that was just a dream!"

But no. This time, I awakened, as I have over these past 6 years after her death, from a nightmare about her, to an internal scream of, 

"O Hell No!!!" 

And emotionally, I am a mess.

In my nightmare, she had been in some form of treatment, and was home on a pass, but a woman was here with her saying, "She's got to go back---there's a technicality not attended to, so she has to go back 'to fill out a form.'" I was furious. 

What A Cruel Joke:  

"She's here, but you can't have her."

I wake up, as I said, to my internal screams of  

 "O Hell No! 

"Having to live without her is a living nightmare!" 

It seems I've always got a simmering growl underneath the surface. I feel a constant tension in my jaw. Weeping and gnashing are going on all the time inside me at an unconscious level. 

Yes, I will go through the motions of life during my day, but…

My clumsiness tells on me…

High blood pressure tells on me…

Tension in my jaw tells on me…

Nightmares tell on me...

It's like at some deep level there is always weeping and gnashing going on in my heart and soul.

Perhaps this is really "the new normal" for Child-Loss Grievers, better defined as

"The New Hell-on-Earth Normal"! 

Everything in me, for some unexplainable reason, is trying to keep her alive and keep her home, but it's not working. 

My Life's Call: Keep my child alive. 

Mission: Failed.

Pictures - Top, Dark Sky, thanks to Grieving Mother, Nancy Tuz
Below, Climbing the Heavens, thanks to Grieving Mother, Darlene Thomas

Wednesday's Woe - A Father is Always Seeking His Lost Lamb ~by Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

A Father is Always Seeking His Lost Lamb

~by Tommy Prince

"Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them? Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, 'Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.' I tell you that in the same way there is more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent."

~Luke 15:4-7 NIV (Jesus speaking)

With this upcoming Father's Day, I am asking myself, "What is there to celebrate?"

In the parable, the shepherd leaves the sheep --although he loves them-- to go out and find his lost one. He drops everything to go look for his little lost lamb. And in the parable, he finds the lost sheep, and there is great rejoicing. But there's no rejoicing with this father even though I'm surrounded with other lambs that I love.

As a bereaved father, my heart is always seeking my little lost lamb. Even though there may be great rejoicing in Heaven right now, there's a permanent longing in this father that's always present in my little lost lamb's absence. 

To this day, I cannot celebrate Father's Day with my little lamb lost… I can't be celebrating with the lambs that are present, for emotionally, my heart is always searching for the one who's still absent…

Pictures, thanks to Jesus Daily Pics