Wednesday's Woe - Like It Was Yesterday - (The Trauma They Don't Know About…)

Wednesday's Woe

Like It Was Yesterday...

(The Trauma They Don't Know About…)

I dreamed of my child today,

A young adult, just like she was then!

(Not as a child

Like I usually dream)

We were sitting together,

She, filling out forms,

Me, concerned about her

All, like it was yesterday…

She went with some doctors

They took her away

They came back a minute later

Saying, "She died."

I was just with her!

It can't be.

Disbelief!

I wake up ~

Relieved!

Coming out of my deep sleep

My mind scrambled

To make sense of now.

Realization.

But, she is gone!

She was killed!

Back to my living nightmare…

But… I was just with her!

It was all so real…

Just moments ago, with her!

Agitated for hours now,

not knowing why…

Then I weep…

I was just with her---

Now she's gone.

Again...

Grief starts all over

Like it was yesterday…

~~~

Poem - Like It Was Yesterday ~Angie Bennett Prince - May 5, 2014

Dreams Graphic, thanks to 

Jackie Wergin-Trudeau / FB

C.S. Lewis Quote, thanks to

Quotes

Casie Hawkins on Pinterest

Wednesday's Woe - Dream Sapper ~Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

Dream Sapper

~Tommy Prince

I dreamed about Merry Katherine this morning… I don't know exactly what I dreamed. But it takes something out of me, like I'm moving through the day as though I'm walking through molasses. Whatever edge I felt I had is gone. There is a dullness about everything, my thought process, my energy level; it's like the dream has sapped away whatever energy I had been using to barely function. 

In my dream, I am thrilled that there is contact with her, but then there's the "Oh no!" of the harsh reality that I awaken to. It doesn't totally knock me back like it used to; used to, it would take me days to recover from such a dream. But now, it just brings on a heavy dullness. It opens up, or it peels back, the veneer of normalcy, such that the sadness that is always there rises to the surface.

Graphics, thanks to ~Inspirational Quotes to Live and Learn

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 - Denial After 6 Years?! ~Tommy and Angie Prince

Every day since you've been gone, there's such an isolating loneliness and an aching so deep inside; it's a feeling that fills my head, my heart, my eyes and my ears, a feeling that steals away the joy, leaving only the torment of my tears. And every day when this feeling comes, the power and intensity is like a thousand drums pounding in my heart tearing me apart.

My heart and I will never get used to your being gone.

Wednesday's Woe

Denial After 6 Years?!

~Tommy and Angie Prince

To deal with the reality of what happened to our child, we could not function with such reality "in our face" all the time. As psychoanalyst Otto Rank describes, it is neurotic to not face our live's truths, but it is also neurotic to face our harsh truths at all times. We do need to process the death of our child into our brains, our psyches, our bodies, our souls, etc. But we also need to take some breaks from such harsh reality at times to give our poor systems a breather. We have to face death and yet live at the same time, so it becomes a living nightmare.

We talk about life's rhythms. One thing that can stop our life's rhythm in its tracks is to momentarily "set aside" your child's death by becoming busy with life, then happen to glance at a picture of her you haven't seen in a long time ~ a flash of normalcy at some other time in your life comes face to face with the harsh reality of her death. What???! NOOO!!!! That couldn't have happened to my baby, not that!!! Not in her young life!!! The very striking picture of her screams out "Beautiful Life in All its Normalcy." But, No!!! You're "Chutes and Laddered" back down to 'Start" in a second's time. Square One. Day One of your grief. And the pain comes tumbling down over your heart like a freight train to where you wonder if you will survive...

Wednesday's Woe - To Thine Own Self... Be Cruel...?!

Wednesday's Woe

To Thine Own Self...Be Cruel...?!

...From Dreams to the Living Nightmare

~by Tommy Prince

Is anybody besides me having dreams abut your child? Last night, I did. What a conundrum it throws me into~it's such a joy to see her and to realize (in my dream of course) that

"IT'S ALL BEEN A BIG MISTAKE!

She did NOT get killed."

And so, I tell my child in my dream,

"Everyone thinks you are dead. We've got to get word out to your friends' houses--You didn't die! You are here!"

It seems my subconscious mind in my dreams is being mean to me. What a setup for disaster because at some point, I have to wake up, and then I'm thrown all the way back to square one:

I have to realize all over again, that

My child WAS killed.

She is NOT here.

She will NOT be coming back.

She IS gone...

When I have these dreams, I am no good for days after...

Whoever talks about "controlling" your grief is, Number One, Nuts anyway. But Number Two,

"Oh yeah, what about when your own dreams betray you? What then? What's your easy answer, your 'magic solution' for that?"

What a pounding! And what a trap -- to find that it's my OWN MIND terrorizing me!

Having a dream of my baby girl being here, alive-and-well, just feels like I've been hit with an Emotional Sledgehammer.

Is anybody else having dreams abut your child?

If so, how does it typically impact you?

images:

http://media.photobucket.com/image/sledgehammer/NaMoi-aKoMoi/Sledgehammer-1.jpg?o=46

http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/sledgehammer.html

Wednesday’s Woe - Nightmare - Stuck in Time

Wednesday’s Woe

Nightmare - Stuck in Time

What PTSD Looks Like...

I haven't been the same since I dreamed a couple of days ago - that I was with Merry Katherine in a swing - Merry Katherine was a toddler. But the swing was a type of child-like car. There were other toddlers in the room with us. They were in their own cars. I was driving Merry Katherine, and we were following her friends from room to room at a pretty fast speed. She said, "Can't we go faster?" and grabbed the control (like a Playstation-type conrol). She pushed the buttons, and we began to go really fast; it felt like flying to me, so I said, "No baby, we can't do this..." and then I awakened...

Once again, I felt out-of-control, like I had been pushed too far at her insistence and it was gonna be to her demise - I can 't seem to break out of this nightmare - She, helpless, and thinking like a child, I her mommy, the adult in the position supposed to help her, yet I was helpless to stop her... and it all led to her demise...

Much of my life seemed to be about handling that balance, allowing enough of a challenge for her, but not so much that it could put her in danger...yet she would always push the limits...and ultimately did so, to her sure demise...

Nightmare - Stuck in Time

My baby girl, so sweet to me,

19 years, had her with me.

Now, she has gone to Heaven...

But I? I'm stuck in a nightmare,

So my life's stuck in time...

Stuck in a nightmare

God, I can't get out -

My baby's in danger

I cant get her out...

When can I stop this Merry-go-round

That threw my poor baby down to the ground?

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall...

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

And now I can't throw a pillow down,

I can't break her fall down to the ground…

And with all the king's horses and with all the king's men

...We still can't put my baby back together again...

Jack and Jill ran up the hill to fetch a pail of water...

Jack fell down and broke his crown, and

Jill came tumbling after...

Stuck in a nursery rhyme

Stuck in time

My baby's not here with me

My life's stuck in time...

Stuck in a nightmare

God, I can't get out -

My baby's in danger

And I cant get her out...

Stuck in a nursery rhyme

When can I stop this Merry-go-round?

That threw my poor baby down to the ground?

My baby fell down and broke her crown,

And now I can't throw a pillow down,

To break her fall down to the ground...

And I can't put her back together again...

And I can't bring her back home to me again...

So I'm stuck in an endless nursery rhyme

That ends in senseless tragedy...

(What were those nursery rhymes telling me

when I was only 2 or 3,

sitting upon my Mother's knee?)

Nursery rhymes warn of life's senseless tragedy?

Stuck in a nightmare

God, I can't get out -

My baby's in danger

I cant get her out...

When can I stop this Merry-go-round

That threw my poor baby down to the ground?

I can't stop her fall.

I can't break her fall.

I can't stop this senseless tragedy,

But this was my baby who sat on my knee...

And now my baby's not here with me,

But my body's on alert, cannot forget.

Stuck in a panic, stuck in a sweat...

My baby's in danger

I must get her out...

Stuck in a senseless nursery rhyme,

So my life's stuck in time...

Stuck in a nightmare

God, I can't get out -

My baby's in danger

I cant get her out...

When can I stop this Merry-go-round

That threw my poor baby girl down to the ground?

Now, she has gone to Heaven,

But I?

I'm stuck in a nightmare,

So my life's stuck in time...

{How can so much of God's truth

be stuck in a nursery rhyme?}

Stuck in a nursery rhyme

Stuck in time

My baby's not here with me

My life's stuck in time...

Now, she has gone to Heaven,

But I?

I'm stuck in a nightmare,

So my life's stuck in time...

Picture: Eye with Clock Implanted - http://twitpic.com/15rf8v

http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/merry-go-round.html

Poem - Nightmare- Stuck in Time - Angie Bennett Prince - 3/9/10