Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, Grief and Trauma Life Coach, Psychotherapist, and Mother Grieving. On 8/2/2006, our precious 19-yr-old daughter Merry Katherine was killed along w/ 2 other teens via vehicular manslaughter. Here I share as we agonizingly process our grief and trauma. Email: MotherGrieving(at)gmail(dot)com. Coaching (Tommy or Angie): Call 865-548-4four3four / Counseling (Angie in TN) 865-604-9nine9two. I pray God will minister to you here.
Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, psychotherapist and Mother Grieving.
Tommy and I met in graduate school in Atlanta, then married in 1979 and started a Christian Counseling/Coaching practice in Knoxville, TN where we still live. We have 1 daughter Merry Katherine, forever-19 in Heaven, 2 sons, Nathan (age 34) (wife Ashley), and Rollin (age 37) (wife Stephanie), and two granddaughters, Ellie and Penny.
In this blog, we process our grief over our Merry Katherine who was killed along with two other teens in a brutal car crash while on the way to the beach on 8/2/2006 (two teens survived). Having lost our daughter suddenly and violently on the cusp of launching her into adulthood, we were thrown into Complicated and Traumatic Grief. We share here our agonizing process of wading through the multiple twists and turns of shattered assumptions, challenged faith, traumatized body-soul-and-spirts, and devastated hearts. May our grief touch some of your own pain as we walk through this difficult but sacred ground together.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Scientifically Documented!
1) Copy the http: address above the line below. . . .
2) Paste it into your web browser's address bar. . .
3) Hit Enter to find the article below.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080620195446.htm
___________________"Addicted To Grief? Chronic Grief Activates Pleasure Areas Of The Brain"
OR "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Has Now Been Scientifically Documented!
. . . . . We now have physiological evidence via Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that such "comfort" is indeed, a fact! In debilitating, complicated grief after the sudden death of a loved one, "comfort" was shown by significant nucleus accumbens activation in the brain's reward network!
Going through holidays seems doubly depressive. Going through a child's birthday, I KNOW I am so different than years before, and I get depressed at the loss of myself, the loss of who I once was on their birthdays. And then on top of that, I have the realization that THEY KNOW I am so different, when their day is not made as special as it once was, if at all!
Ah, the conflict of one of our child's birthdays approaching - it conjures up anxiety and dread... On the one hand, I'd like to be able to celebrate, but on the other hand, I don't know if I can even get through it!!! And on this past weekend, with this son, my birthday boy, being from out of town, it's not like, "Can we do this on a different day this time?" because he is in from out of town, and has to get back to go back to work... Pressure's on, but I still have nothing to give...
Now, add to all this tension, this same son comes in the door telling me how already, I have done "it" wrong, and his feelings have been hurt, so our visit has hardly even gotten off the ground and I already feel like a complete failure before I even start. Welcome to the "Happy Birthday" weekend, or really, "day" because he saved us for last after already celebrating with his friends in another city. (Thank goodness he did have some place to actually celebrate!)
Well, as you might imagine, it did not go well. We had to take time to get out all our frustrations and hurts first, and then our hearts melted into one another's, all of us realizing that coming off a week where one child's very life was threatened with having just found out he had cancer (the exact same cancer mind you, that TOOK my own brother's life), AND having to have the surgery to remove said cancer all in the same week. We were all a mess, and is it any wonder?
Trying to celebrate a life while a death was breathing down another one's neck was really quite the challenge. So, a good talk once nerves were settled, and we came to new understandings about one another, and our love and care were deepened for one another. Once again, God provides in an otherwise unwieldy impasse!!!
But oh, the turmoil that gets stirred up when we are all just trying to love one another really! It's sad; it's just incredibly sad. My birthday son's hypervigilance was stirred up in worrying about his brother, and it seems we already tread lightly on this earth hoping we won't lose anybody else, and then death seems to stare you in the face.
All quite the trappings for a horrific weekend, but we were able to love one another through it. Could a non-griever ever begin to imagine such nightmares as we face on any given day, even one as typically festive as a person's birthday would be?
Today, I had a wonderful Mother's Day with my hubby Tommy, my two sons Rollin and Nathan, and Rollin's wife of two years now, Stephanie. After Rollin and Stephanie left a few hours ago, I was reminded of this song that Rollin picked out soon after Merry Katherine was killed... But first, some background so you can better understand the song's significance.
***
Rollin is Merry Katherine's older brother. As children, with him the oldest, and her the youngest and both having very strong personalities, there were a lot of clashes. Nathan was the middle child and being close to both of them, was usually their peacemaker. There were probably quite a few hurtful things that transpired between Rollin and Merry Katherine over the years, a few of which I know about from what they have shared.
But when Rollin started high school, he began going to the youth group of the same church in which his daddy had gone as a child/growing teen. As Rollin began to faithfully attend all aspects of the youth group, appropriately called "Journey," his faith took on a more personal and deeper note with His Lord. He seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds, surrounded with good friends who were growing in the Lord too, as they honestly challenged one another, growing as they were being discipled by one another as well as under some great youth leaders.
Rollin's brother and sister watched skeptically, not sure they could trust such a major change in his life, but they began to see a real difference in him day-in and day-out. Merry Katherine, meanwhile, was beginning to stretch her wings and try new things in her then middle-school years, but her brothers were faithful to talk to her about their concerns and prodded her to join them in their youth group as she was leaving middle school and entering high school. So she did join them her freshman year.
Rollin was so precious to take the songs that had ministered so much to his heart, and introduce those songs to Merry Katherine so that they might minister to her as well. They had a very similar taste in music of all the pop culture songs anyway, but these songs were songs that seemed to penetrate the heart and soul. The songs gradually pierced her in a way too that began drawing her heart ever closer to the Lord.
It was so sweet watching both this transformation in the two siblings that fought the most with one another, and the transformations in their hearts as God was getting ahold of them with His amazing life-transforming love.
(Nathan was also growing tremendously in the Lord in their same group.) Merry Katherine continued to struggle off and on with her sin nature, and the tug-of-war between God and Satan, but God's hold on her was real. Her heart was so tender toward Him, and she too began to grow and be discipled by her friends in the youth group and by her own amazing youth group leaders.
We would often hear her belting out the songs Rollin had been sharing with her as she would sing along with her loudly-playing stereo from her bedroom, or with headphones while mowing the grass, singing out above the noise...
***
So after her death, it really touched me when Rollin came to me a couple of weeks after her funeral with the following song that he found, saying that this was the song he felt he most wanted to share with Merry Katherine, expressing his heart's sentiments in the way that he typically did with her...through song.
The song just seems to capture their personalities and their adventuresome spirits along with their newfound (over those past six years) tenderness with one another, their hearts' desire for God, and their growing relationships with Him...
Breakfast Table
Chris Rice
Was it a million miles to Heaven,
Too far to hear my lonely song?
Or is it just my imagination...I hear you humming along
I only hold you in my dreams now
I wake up with cold and empty arms
Lord help me get through this long night without you
And soon as the morning comes...
Soon as the morning comes...
Save me a seat at the breakfast table
Save me a dance around the Milky Way
And save me a thousand years to whisper in your ears
All I've wanted to say
Save me a smile and an angel's feather
Save me a walk down the streets of gold
And maybe, we'll change our minds just like old times
And maybe we'll just fly away...
Or maybe we'll stay!
You lucky dog, you're in heaven before me...
You were my taste of Heaven here
Remember we loved to talk about it, we couldn't wait to get there
So you go on and find your way around now
But remember I'm here missing you...
Do me a favor and say 'Hey' to Jesus
And tell him I'm missing Him too
Tell him I'm missing Him too
Then save me a seat at the breakfast table
Save me a dance around the Milky Way
And save me a thousand years to whisper in your ears
All I've wanted to say
Save me a smile and an angel's feather
Save me a walk down the streets of gold
And maybe, we'll change our minds just like old times
And maybe we'll just fly away!
Save me a seat at the breakfast table
Save me a dance around The Milky Way
Save me a thousand years to whisper in your ears
All I've wanted to say
Save me a smile and an angel's feather
Save me a walk down the streets of Gold
Maybe we'll change our minds just like old times
Or maybe we'll just fly away...
Maybe we'll fly away...we'll fly away...
'Cause I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you!
What was lost, in darkness found. (By Nathan Prince)
The worst of all realities had come: I no longer had my dear companion by my side. My closest friend, one who had helped shape me into the man that I am, was gone. Our lives now utterly and completely separated, Merry Katherine, the sister I knew would always be there, had died. The many roles she had in my heart that used to be so precious to me had now formed gaping holes. I lost the baby sister I cherished; the young woman I lovingly watched over; the sidekick in whom I delighted; the soul I had dearly bonded with; I would never know any of them again.
As you can probably gather, we were close, and pretty inseparable growing up. We actually referred to each other as our other half most of the time. Her death had indeed left me with a feeling of incompletion. I had to suddenly accept that of all the people in this world, it would be her presence that my life would now be missing. I do not know what it would be like to lose the mother who had given me life and love. Or my father who had inspired me to be courageous and a humble servant of the Lord. Or my brother who had brought me constant laughter and camaraderie. No, of all people, this was the single most capable person that “got me.” Merry and I shared a lifelong commitment of intimacy and partnership.
I think (the) majority of the pain was the timing of it all. Both of us being in college, we had regained our solidarity. This was the time in our lives when we most needed each other and we could really appreciate having the other to count on. Her troubled romantic life and my lack of a romantic life gave us the solace in knowing the other would be there for us. Through thick and thin, we trusted it. In depression or elation, we relied on it. In quarrels or harmony, we understood it. Both of us knew deep down that neither of us would ever leave the other’s side.
Neither of us would lose the hope we shared when we were little: “You’ll always be my best friend no matter what.” It was a pact that we were confident nothing in this world could break…but we never considered it could be broken without either of us deciding it to…or so suddenly.
As much grief that I experienced in the next 2 years would provide me with a lingering feeling of betrayal that I had no say in losing my best friend. I had zero say in the matter. Oddly, I did not blame God for it. I did not really blame Satan (as much as he is the root of all deaths). It felt kind of like the feeling when you lose the one object you hold most precious to your heart. Whatever that thing is, you greatly value it in your heart. When it goes missing you feel almost incomplete without it, and losing it devastates you to the core. Depending on what that thing is, the amount of sorrow that follows varies from situation to situation, but we have all had it happen. You don’t have anything else to do but accept that it’s gone. You don’t look at God to blame that it went missing, it just did. No matter who is to blame for losing it, it just hurts, and that’s all that matters to you.
. . . This was how it was after her death, when I had to start from scratch in my perspective on life itself. I began to view life in an eternal sense, simply because I had to. Peace only came when looking at things eternally. Temporarily, her death was certainly tragic, but eternally it was majestic. My sister was now in the presence of the King. How could I stay in a state of sorrow when the one I looked out for the most was now in the loving arms of her Creator? The one that loved her the most had welcomed her home, and I accepted my new life out of the trust that she now had a new, perfect life.
When we both were at Lee (University), I used to cry when we would worship in the same room because I knew that she was rekindling her relationship with the One who wanted her most. I felt at peace knowing she and I were worshiping the God that had blessed us with each other and that we were sharing in the joy that comes from being in His presence. The world would assume that it would only logically follow that with her absence, my worshiping God without her would feel incomplete or lacking. Illogically, the next time I worshiped the Lord, it was even more emotional. I was worshiping the One she was now with, and I felt her with me more than ever before in the presence of our Father. It was as if there was now an overflow of joy like never before knowing that she now worships as a way of life as I do it with a conscious effort. More tears had never fallen out of my eyes when one day, during worship in chapel, I was standing, hands raised toward heaven, singing along with all the angels, and I could feel her hand in mine as we truly worshiped God in awe of Him in all His glory.
I now see (from) her death. . . a gift from a loving God. Do I think (God) caused (her death) to happen? I don’t believe so. Did He just let it happen? I think He has more control than that. . . . He mourned with me over it . . . . I had never felt the Lord like I did when I was at the depths of suffering in, (grappling) with the loss of my truest friend I had in this world. That is when God came down to me; He took that hole that she left, and not only filled it, but replaced it with a perfect friendship with Himself.
I understand my heavenly Father as love. I felt His love more powerfully at 21 than many people ever get to. . . . I miss (Merry Katherine) and the closeness we had with all my heart. But it was with losing her that God was able to make Himself all in all in my life when I had to start from scratch. On August 2nd, 2006, I lost my best friend, but I gained a Savior I had never known before. I had known a lot about who He is, but I had not known Him as He is. He is not a God that loves us from atop the clouds, but a God that stoops down low, comes into our deepest places, lifts our eyes, picks us up, wipes away our tears, and holds us…as long as we’d like, and covers us all over with the comfort and peace that surpasses understanding. That my friends, is the love that I could never have known before she left . . . and it’s a priceless gift that I would wish (for) all of you. Let God bring you out of tragedy and into His arms. He loves you, and He waits for you.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. ----Romans 15:13 (KJV)
I love each and every one of you. . . . (A)s much as we need love, I pray for all of you to find it in the only Person that can love you infinitely and unconditionally.
(Written by Nathan Prince for Facebook Friends, highlights mine) Yesterday at 7:26am (Feb. 27, 2009)
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