Thursday's Therapy - Tears: You're Stuck With This Pain

Thursday's Therapy

Tears: "You're Stuck With This Pain"

from

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

Part One of Eight

Jayne Raines Newton of The Atlanta Compassionate Friends mailed me this wonderfully therapeutic speech this week, and I'd like to pass it along to you!

Jayne’s words:

Charlie Walton and his wife Kay joined us in Marietta last night to hear Alan Pedersen perform. Charlie is near and dear to me. He was the first person who introduced me to TCF in Nov 1996..two months after my son had died. Thank you Charlie for all you do for bereaved parents.

******

Sunday, July 6, 2003 - TCF National Conference

Conference Closing Speech by Charlie Walton

Charlie’s words:

Thank you for the kind introduction... and for the invitation to speak to this audience of "reluctant heroes." I clearly remember sitting where you are sitting, watching some poor guy step to a microphone like this, and mentally daring him to try and say anything that would make a difference for me.

One of the real downsides of writing a few books about anything is that people get the idea that you know the answers. But the most important thing I have learned in these years of talking with people in grief is that

The world's leading expert on your grief...is sitting right there in your chair.

Human grief has no easy answers.

I named my first book When There Are No Words... because that is exactly the situation when your child dies. There are no words that help.

The pain comes to stay and. no matter how much people want to kiss it and make it well, grief runs on its own timetable.

Your kid... was like no other. Your grief... is like no other. And the gradual easing of your pain is not going to happen by anybody else's formula.

Maybe the most liberating thing that first book did was to give its readers permission to grieve in their own time and in their own ways.

SOME THINGS I'VE LEARNED:

I'd like to spend a little time with you this morning talking about a few things I have learned during the past seventeen years since two of our three sons died. These are personal observations based on, first, being a bereaved parent, and then drawing on a lot of conversations... and emails... and letters that have come as a result of my books.

Let me emphasize that

This list of "things I have learned"... did not "drop from heaven."

So, some of what I say may be the absolute opposite of what you have experienced. But. like your mama told you... "If you don't like it, just leave it on the plate."

1. YOU'RE STUCK WITH THIS PAIN.

The first thing I want to tell you is that...

You are stuck with this pain. You are going to hurt. real bad. for a long time.

And even though everybody around you is going to be wishing your pain away, you're gonna keep on hurting for a long time.

There will come a day when you will have longer periods between the pains but, at least in my experience, when the memories do come flooding back, even after seventeen years, they are going to hurt just as much as the first day you got the news.

But the surprising thing is, that's the way it ought to be. Just think about it. If I told you that I have the power to wave a magic wand and instantly remove the pain you are feeling, and if you really thought about it for a bit, I think you would say, "Well thanks, Charlie, but I guess maybe I better go ahead and hurt a little while longer."

Even though your first thought might be "I cannot stand this pain any longer!" your second and third thoughts would reveal to you that the unprecedented, unequalled pain that you are enduring is actually your tribute to what you have lost.

What would it say if you had a most precious person torn from your life, and you continued along in your life as if nothing had happened?

Pain is lousy, and it hurts, but the depth of your pain testifies to the depth of your love, and the significance of your loss.

You know, nothing gives me more pleasure in life than to hear that something I have written has helped somebody. I've tried to analyze why my book has helped. And beyond the basic fact that I have personally sat where my reader is sitting, there is also the fact that the book does not promise that everything is going to be all right. I didn't want anybody to tell me "What has happened to you is terrible, but it's gonna be alright!" I know now that that was true, but I didn't want to hear it then.

So, I tried to write a book that said, "What has happened to you is terrible" and stop at that, leaving the words about healing until much later when they might be more useful.

So, "thing one" that I have learned.

Enjoy the pain. Appreciate it. Savor it. It hurts, but it is the appropriate response to overwhelming loss.

Your tears are your tribute to one who has been taken from you.

******

Thank you to Charlie Walton, and to Jayne Raines Newton, both of The Atlanta Compassionate Friends.

TCF = The Compassionate Friends

Catch and Release

Catch and Release


Standing in the little creek, he will cast
His line into the water, slinging past
The branches of the nearby trees, the patch
Of tallest trees, thus hoping not to catch
His line among the branches’ burly limbs,
And thus confuse neither balance nor whims,
Whims of fancy drawn to drown out the gloom:
Gloom that had descended as heart-hurts loom
Since his older brother had gone away
Somewhere far away where he’d have to stay:
“Who’ll throw my ball with me, now that he’s gone?”
The thought caught his mind as the hook upon
The branch above did catch, spinning his heart
Like his line spinning around the limb – part
Of his hook sticking as his heart got stuck
In places unwanted, grief’s mire and muck.
He pulled and pulled till the hook came unstuck,
At the same time God’s Word upon him struck:
“Cast all your cares upon Him, for He cares
For you!”* He cast again, this time no snares,
Neither from branch nor his thoughts held him up.
But—what luck! Just as he pulled his line up,
He saw his caught-fish fly up in the air
Just as he glimpsed God holding him with care!
He knew at that moment he would get through—
It would not be easy, his heart still blue,
But his heart suddenly filled with God’s peace,
The hurts from his heart did suddenly cease—
When he thought of his brother in God’s care,
He could see him fishing in waters there . . .
He knew he was not stuck with death’s caprice . . .
For just as death did “catch,” God did release!

* I Peter 5:7

Painting by Thomas Hart Benton, Boy Fishing, 1930's

Poem written in response to poetry cues: cast, catch, confuse, and to Benton's painting of "Boy Fishing" as noted on the blog, Simply Snickers: http://simplysnickers.blogspot.com/2009/04/poetry-prompt-through-sunday-april-19.html

Written 4/18/09 - Catch and Release - Angie Bennett Prince

Projectile Grieving

Tommy's friend called him today. . . .I'll give a little background: Yesterday was Tommy's birthday, the third one after Merry Katherine's death. As Tommy says, "Now the numbness (of the first two and a half years) has worn off and the agitation and weepiness have set in."

After Tommy's birthday party last night with our family--our two sons, our daughter-in-law, and I were all present with him, yet . . . our baby girl was starkly absent . . . we sat down in the now-quiet den this morning. I took that opportunity to give Tommy a birthday card I had felt Merry Katherine wanted me to give him, and a present --two books, and a clear plastic teddy bear full of cotton-candy jelly beans which were always hers and her daddy's favorite-- When he saw the card that read, "DaDa" on the envelope, he thought it was a card from Nathan, our younger son. When he opened it, it took him totally off guard when he looked down and saw the card's picture of a little girl that looked just like Merry Katherine when she was little, and as he said it, "That was the end of being able to breathe normally for the next hour." He couldn't read the card.

After he saw the picture, Tommy's three-day agitation--like deep-freezer ice--went through an instant melt-down. Here came the gut-wrenching sobs that needed to come but had been put "on ice" to be able to get through his birthday party the night before in a pleasant way for his family's sake.

Tommy described this sobbing phenomenon in his own inimitable way this afternoon when I overheard him talking to a friend who had called him on the phone to talk and to check on him. (This friend has also lost a child):

His friend asked, "How are you doing?"

Tommy candidly stated, "It's been a rough day. It's twice as bad as the last one when you saw me so upset."

His friend then responded, "I'm sorry you're feeling bad."

Then Tommy said,

(Grief's) just one of those things that's gotta run its course. It's just like being nauseated; you can try to talk yourself out of throwing up, but you're gonna throw up anyway.

I thought boy that captures it, the inevitability of sorrow. . .that it's got to flow, or it will come out one way or another eventually! I think he was then greatly relieved to have been able to finally "feel" those pent-up feelings in a warm, safe, and private environment. The rest of the day today, he says he has felt some relief yet is also emotionally spent.

Then, to top it all off, we found out later in the day that a girl in our neighborhood (who had been a friend to our three children) was found--murdered . . . .

It's affected his ability to talk the rest of the day. And I am not doing so well either. . .

Writing "The Stone" out of my Anguish

The poem, “The Stone,” was written out of my terrible anguish and confusion; I wrote it before I could set foot into that funeral home to decide what we “wanted” to put on Merry Katherine's gravestone. We were literally about to walk out the door when I just had to stop, sit down and write first. I absolutely knew I could not go there until I met with God first to process through some of my torment.

He knew the funeral home was the last place I wanted to go on behalf of my vital, lively, ever-active nineteen-year-old, and He so tenderly gifted me with that poem. Then we were able to go and complete that task—not an easy one, but with much more peace in my heart to be able to tackle it anyway. God is so merciful; He meets me in my heartache and pain, restoring an eternal perspective, and then, He wraps His arms around me and comforts me.