Wednesday's Woe - WARNING! GRIEVING PARENTS LIVE HERE!

Wednesday's Woe

WARNING! GRIEVING PARENTS LIVE HERE!

or

The Third Year of Grief..."We Should Be Over It!" ???

Last week my husband and I went to a holiday party. We enjoyed the food, piano music, and visiting with friends. As we prepared to leave, a friend asked what I was doing these days. When I told her we were raising our twin grandchildren because their parents had died in separate car crashes, her jaw dropped.

"That's unbelievable," she said.

Another person overheard our conversation and was obviously uncomfortable with my honesty. This is not the first time this has happened. Years ago, I had a similar experience. I answered a question honestly and a guest commented, "Please don't spoil the party." She was partially right. There is a time and place to tell your story, but sometimes you tell it because you are surprised or caught off guard.

You have a story to tell. But Vamik D. Vokan, MD and Elizabeth Zintl, in their book Life After Loss, say the American culture prohibits the expression of grief. "We are a culture of death deniers," they write. Death deniers, which may include family members and friends, do not want any connection with your pain. Yet you must tell your story in order to cope, do your grief work, and create a new life.

Grief changes you forever. Not telling your story is to deny your identity and life experience. Though you are temporarily lost in the darkness, telling your story helps you find your way through grief. At least, that is my experience after losing four loved ones in nine months.

~Harriet Hodgson quoting "JoAnne," How Long Should You Tell Your Grief Story? 12/22/09

******

Word has it, some folks think my grief is in slow motion...

Well that's putting it mildly.

To put it bluntly, they think,

"You mean she is not over it?!"

What?!

Really now, do they think I should

be "Over" the Grief of Losing My Child?!

Yes, Grief is Slow!

Yes, I am in a Bad Way!

Yes, I am in a lot of pain!

But really now, you think I should be over the loss of my 19-year-old baby girl who was my heart and soul, and the apple of my eye?!

If I really wanted to be ugly about it, I might say something tacky that a little southern, Georgia peach would never say, like,

"Well golly, you must not love your kids then, because if any of them died, then 3 years later, you would never, EVER be 'over' losing them!"

******

Dealing with the land-of-the-living when you are walking through the Valley-of-the-Shadow-of-Death can be confusing at the very least, and at times, downright infuriating. If I sense even an inkling of the "you-ought-to-be-over-it" nonsense coming from a colleague, friend, or family member, I do my best to stay FAR AWAY from that person. No thank you, I don't have any more room for any additional toxins on my plate. Loss of a child is quite enough, thank you. No room for ignorance, judgmentalism, or the shallow thinking that if-you-have-God-in-your-life-then-all-should-be-peachy-keen...

I wonder, did they ever REALLY examine Jesus' life? I mean, He was God's own Son, and yet all-was-NOT-peachy-keen in His life on this earth, my dear!

And to top it all, if you read your Bible, you will find

Jesus Himself reminded us, His dearly beloved children, over and over, in-effect,

Your lives here on Earth will NOT be "peachy-keen"!

We are to expect

Suffering,

Bearing our cross,

Not getting the completion of the promise this side of Heaven,

etc., etc., etc.

******

So Grief itself is crazy-making enough. I don't need anyone to pile on, thank you very much.

Thank goodness I ran across this book this month, What Forever Means With the Death of a Child, in the midst of my debilitating grief that was throwing out spiritual warfare, anxiety attacks, and mental quagmires that were almost impossible to find my way out of...

In this book, I found an "answer" to "explain" my mind-blowing grief. Kay Talbot is a grieving mother and a very thorough psychotherapist, articulating beautifully this world-of-grief we child-loss parents find ourselves in. In her book, she reveals some child-loss research that aligns with my current reality:

The average parent going through child-loss grief Bottoms Out at the Third Year (at least in regard to the difficulty of being able to see any semblance of purpose for their lives...). My interpretation of this research is

Child-Loss Grief Bottoms Out Around Year Three...

and around year three is exactly where I am!

This research helps me feel

I am not really going crazy... This Hellatious-kind of Grief is par-for-the-course with child-loss!

So...

As far as I can tell, my spiritual source, Jesus, tells me I am going through the expected hell that comes with living on this earth...

And my psychological research source, Dr. Kay Talbot, tells me that I am going through the expected hell that comes with living with this child-loss grief!

******

I feel like the Tennessee moon-shiner, Popcorn Sutton: Being that his career was illegal and thus inadvertently attracted many unwelcome parties to snoop around his life, he hung a sign on his shed that I sometimes would like to borrow...It reads, in effect,

"WARNING! POPCORN SUTTON LIVES HERE,

SO KEEP YORE DAM @$$ OUT!"

Maybe my husband will make us a sign to put on our gate that says,

WARNING! GRIEVING PARENTS LIVE HERE,

SO KEEP YORE DAM @$$ OUT!

Now, isn't that a sweet little thought from this Georgia peach!

Thursday's Therapy - The Final Gift

Thursday's Therapy

The Final Gift

from

A TCF Speech – 8 Things I’ve Learned About the Grief of a Grieving Parent

Part Eight of Eight

Sunday, July 6, 2003 - TCF National Conference Closing Speech by Charlie Walton

Part Eight

8. THE FINAL GIFT.

Finally, I want to tell you something that I have begun to realize as the years have passed since the night that Tim and Don, and Don's best friend, Bryan, died. I have realized that, by their deaths and the deep permanent scar it left in my life, they gave me a gift of immeasurable value.

The final gift bestowed by any loved one who is torn from your grasp is a clear and unforgettable awareness of what is permanent... and what is temporary.

My second book, which is called Packing for the Big Trip, was written because conversations I had with people about the first book made it so crystal clear that the reason we are all so completely blind-sided by death is that

we live in a "death-denying society," a society where the death rate is 100 percent, but where no one wants to mention it.

I wrote in Packing for the Big Trip, "Every person who dies gives a priceless gift to those who stay behind.

That gift is awareness of death and its manifold implications for our lives. Death awareness is about living. It brings the maturity we need to live our lives with wisdom and joy...to stop cringing at the thought of eventual death... and start living with the daily enthusiasm of those who are packing for the big trip."

Maybe you are still so close to your child's death that you are not ready to see that there could ever be anything good to come from it. That's fine. Maybe you are still wishing you could wring that kid's neck for leaving you here with all this pain. That's fine too. But maybe, you are beginning to realize that

you have new eyes for the upside down values of our culture, that your "death awareness" has given you greater "life wisdom," that your child's death has given you a gift of life.

CLOSING

Well. I could go on for a while but I was told years ago by a speech teacher that "the ear cannot hear what the seat cannot endure." So, let me encourage you to

One, recognize that you are stuck with this pain, but that the depth of your pain represents the extent of your tribute to the one that left you.

Two, understand that people just naturally say a lot of dumb stuff when they are trying to help, and try to be patient and hear what they mean instead of what they say.

Three, understand that you need to tell and re-tell your story a lot more times than you can expect family and friends to hear it, so be grateful for your Compassionate Friends who are willing to hear your story and even make it their own.

Four, give writing a try. It can really help to get some of that confusion out of your mind and onto paper where you can deal with it.

Five, get regular, strenuous exercise even when you don't feel like you can walk across the room.

Six, let people help you, for their benefit and yours.

Seven, watch out for "personality intensification" and give yourself time to become yourself again before you go making decisions while you are "out of your mind with grief."

And finally, recognize the abiding and valuable gift you have received from the person who went away. You have an understanding of life and its true values that you could never have had otherwise.

Let me close with the final words from When There Are No Words.

"My prayer for you is

that you will have peace,

that you will have good grief,

that you will be honest with yourself,

letting out what is within you,

and refusing to govern your ways of grieving by what you think others might be expecting that you ought to do,

that you will allow your loved ones the same right to their own ways of grieving, never assuming that they should want to cry when you feel like crying, or talk when you feel like talking, or sit and stare when you want to,

that both your life and your death will be greatly enhanced by the perspectives that enter your life when a loved one exits your life,

that you will become daily more comfortable with the realization that, as my son Don used to tell me, 'Death is just a part of living.'"

Thank you so much to Charlie Walton for his wise words as a grieving father and to Jayne Raines Newton, head of Atlanta's TCF (The Compassionate Friends) for sharing him with us!

May you all have a wonderful, God-blessed, God-comforted 2010!