Saturday's Sayings - Please Remember with Me...

Saturday's Sayings

Please Remember with Me...

9th – 15th Oct Wave Of Light

This week it is very special,

It is national baby loss week,

Where the nation remembers all babies,

To small to survive or born asleep,

To remember the precious babies,

Stolen too soon by SIDS or disease,

Let us say their names out loud,

Let us remember them all with ease,

From 9th to the 15th all we ever,

Really want to ask of you,

Is to remember these precious children,

For just a day or two,

Special events are being held,

In our cities and our towns,

To remember all these babies,

Who are sadly no longer around,

We are letting off 17 balloons,

Why 17? I hear you say,

Because 17 babies in the UK alone,

Yes 17! Die every single day,

Our final request, it’s not too big,

To create a wave of light,

Please on Oct 15th at 7pm,

Light a candle for us to unite,

Let a wave of light shine out bright,

For each and every Angel we know,

Let the nation unite in a wave of love,

Let their precious memories glow.

Christine Bevington

~via Grieving Mothers

~~~~~

You will soon forget with whom you laughed. 

 You will never forget with whom you wept. 

 -Khalil Gibran 

~~~~~

~picture, via Grieving Mother Jill Compton

~~~~~

Please See Me Through My Tears

You asked, "How are you doing?" 

As I told you, tears came to my eyes...and you 

looked away and quickly began to talk again. 

All the attention you had given me had drained away. 

"How am I doing?" I do better when people listen, 

though I may shed a tear or two. 

This pain is indescribable. 

If you've never known it, you 

cannot fully understand. 

Yet I need you. 

When you look away, 

I am again alone with it. 

Your attention means more than you can ever know. 

Really, tears are not a bad sign, you know! 

They're nature's way of helping me to heal. 

They relieve some of the stress of sadness 

....but you are wrong. 

The memory of my loved one's death will always be with me, 

Only a thought away. 

My tears make my pain more visible to you, but you did not 

give me the pain...it was already there. 

When I cry, could it be that you feel helpless, 

Not knowing what to do? 

You are not helpless, 

And you don't need to do a thing but be there. 

When I feel your permission to allow my tears to flow, 

you've helped me 

You need not speak. Your silence as I cry is all I need. 

Be patient...do not fear. 

Listening with your heart to "how I am doing" relieves the pain 

for when the tears can freely come and go, I feel lighter. 

Talking to you releases what I've wanted to say aloud, 

clearing space 

for a touch of joy in my life. 

I'll cry for a minute or two... and then I'll wipe my eyes 

and sometimes you'll even find I'm laughing later. 

When I hold back the tears, my throat grows tight, 

my chest aches, my stomach knots... 

because I'm trying to protect YOU from my tears. 

Then we both hurt ME, because my pain is held inside, 

a shield against our closeness and YOU, 

because suddenly we are distant. 

So please, take my hand and see me through my tears... 

then we can be close again. 

~Author Unknown

~Via Wings of Hope-Living Forward

~~~~~

When you lose a child,

your life doesn't just change.

You're shattered on the inside.

blown to pieces. your heart broken.

It takes a long time for those

pieces to come back together again.

I'm not looking for your pity.

it's better for me to talk

than to keep everything all inside.

I don't want you to think I'm selfish,

but can't you see how much I'm hurting?

Sometimes I take out my baby's things,

smell them. caress them. hug and kiss them.

and rock them until the tears stop falling.

Please don't turn a blind eye to me.

If you think it's too painful for you,

multiply that by infinity and you might

have a vague idea of how much pain I am in.

I did not ask for this to happen.

I do ask for your love and support.

If you can't think of anything to say.

then just listen to me,

let me borrow your shoulder.

Surely you are stronger than I am,

and you can help me by simply being there.

~~~~~

What Grieving People Want You to Know

• I am not strong---I'm just numb. When you tell me I am strong, I feel that you don't see me.
• I will not recover---this is not a cold or the flu. I'm grieving and that's different. I will not always be grieving as intensely, but I will never forget my baby, and rather than recover I want to incorporate their life and love into the rest of my life. 
• That baby is a part of me and always will be, and sometimes I will remember them with joy and other times with sadness. Both are OK.
• I don't have to accept death---yes I understand that it has happened and it is real, but there are some things in life that are unacceptable.
• Please don't avoid me, you can't catch my grief. My world is painful and when you are afraid to call or visit or say anything, I am isolated at a time when I need most to be cared about.
• If you don't know what to say, just touch my arm, or give me a hug and just say I'm sorry.
• Please don't say to call if I need anything, I'll never call because I have no idea of what I need. 
• Please send me a card on special holidays, birthdays or the anniversary of the death.
• Please say their name. You can't make me cry, the tears are always there. It gives me the opportunity to shed some tears because someone cared enough to reach out to me.
• Ask me more than once to join you in going out. I may say no at first, or even for a while, but please don't give up on me, because somewhere down the line I will be ready and if you have given up then I will really be alone.

~~~~~

Your Grieving is among

the most sacred and the

most human things

you will ever do.

It will plummet you

into the mystery of

life. . .

and death. . .

and resurrection.

Honor it.

~by Karen Kataflasz

~~~~

Bedtime Kisses

As I prepare to close my weary eyes,

My thoughts return to you,

Are you snuggled on your cloud tonight?

Ar you all sleepy too?

I'll send you floaty bedtime kisses,

Just as you drift off to sleep,

Remember Mummy loves you darling,

Your memory I always keep.

My Angel you rest easy,

Til the morning it does come,

I'll see you in my dreams tonight,

My precious little one.

~Christine Bevington 20011

~~~~~

Your death shaped me,

but it is YOUR LIFE that changed me for the better,

It is for that simple reason

your death will NEVER overshadow your life.

~Mary Thompson

~~~~~

I will always miss you... 

you are forever in my heart  

No amount of time... 

will ever keep us apart 

I know you are beside me... 

and you are never far 

I dream of the day you welcome me... 

with your arms open wide 

My Love... 

My Shining Star 

~Necole Stephens

Friday's Faith - How to Hold Faith Amidst Raw Grief

Friday's Faith

How to Hold Faith Amidst Raw Grief

~by Angie and Tommy Prince

A newly bereaved mother wrote to me by e-mail this week, having lost her beloved child less than one month ago. Her message was brief (I am amazed she was able to write at all, of course!), leaving her final request amidst her raw pain asking if I could write her back with anything I might have to say that would give her comfort.

What a sacred privilege. What a shudder-in-your-boots responsibility. To speak to the abject pain of one so steeped in shock one moment, raw paroxysms of grief the next, hoping that one word or sentiment shall be the right one to bring comfort to this dear soul trembling over her recent loss that has brought her to her knees. 

You and I know the inadequacies we feel to describe what we have been through, what we are still going through. 

We can't slickly reel out false promises of,

~Hang in there; it gets better and better!~  

because we know, we KNOW, many times it does not:

After the shock wears off in about a year, the reality begins setting in, and it seems at times our lives get disheveled beyond recognition. Post-traumatic stress often then sets in to where we not only have lost our child, we feel we are losing our minds too, our sanity hanging by a thread. Too often we are left questioning our own judgment for our bodies are screaming danger at every turn while our minds are asking,

~Is there really danger, or have the years of stress wreaked havoc with my heart, body, soul, and spirit to the degree that ALL has become a crisis to which I am too poorly equipped to adapt?~ 

Our relationships become stressed, whether with friend, family, children, and even spouse (which hits especially hard as our soul mate is often our strongest help-meet in a crisis, but as we are both in our own individual raw grief which shows itself in a myriad of different ways depending on the person, the odds are great that at times our styles will clash, and in our raw states, the sparks may fly, and added hurt is piled on our already-decimated hearts). 

Our belief systems have also been accosted, leaving us to question and rework every single belief and idea we had about God so that we can hold on to the Truth and discard forever the tinsel-town empty assurances we had dished out to ourselves, whether wittingly or unwittingly, over the years. We cannot afford to be fooled. Too much is riding on needing comfort, needing what is Real about God, needing His love, His tenderness, His stability, but not any false concepts we may have been holding onto that led us astray in regard to our understanding of Him and His heart. As the beloved grieving father / pastor (whose name I cannot now recall) proclaimed amidst his "Dark Night of the Soul" after his child's death, in essence,

"When we cannot understand God's actions . . .

May we trust His heart."

Grace is the courage to go on believing in the presence of suffering and death. This is real believing, not just the intellectual kind. "The thinking part is not all that hard. It is the feeling part that comes hard the part that lets you know in the deep places of your soul that it is all right even when your head tells you everything is ghastly."

~Lewis B. Smedes in his book, How Can It Be All Right When Everything Is All Wrong?

Pictures, thanks to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthpicturegalleries/7859013/30-electrifying-pictures-of-lightning-and-thunderstorms.html?image=16

Thursday's Therapy - Great Resource for Grief Books ~"Grief to Reading Journey" grief blog

Thursday's Therapy 

Great Resource for Grief Books

~"Grief to Reading Journey" grief blog

Reading and writing have become a way of coping with the sudden and completely unexpected death of my son, Joshua, at the tender age of seventeen. He took his life on March 18, 2009. From that day on, my life will never be the same.

Books That Have Helped - Updated 9/1/2012

~by Josh's mom, posted on her grief blog "Grief to Reading Journey"

I have found solace in many types of books: those written for survivors of suicide, for parents who have lost a child, for those who look to writing as a way of coping, memoirs and even fiction.  The number in parenthesis is the rating given to the book.  I use the GoodReads system.

1 - didn't like it

2 - it was ok

3 - liked it

4 - really liked it

5 - it was amazing

List of books on Josh's blog with short reviews.

Survivors of Suicide

1. No Time to Say Good Bye by Carla Fine (5)
2. My Son, My Son by Iris Bolton (3)
3. Take the Dimness of My Soul Away by William Ritter (3)
4. When Suicide Comes Home: A Father's Diary and Comments by Paul Cox (4)
5. Grieving the Unexpected - the Suicide of a Son by Gary LeBlanc (3)
6. Grieving A Suicide, A Loved One's Search of Comfort, Answers and Hope by Albert Hsu (5)
7. Those They Left Behind by Karen M. Bryson (4)
8. Aftershock by David Cox and Candy Arrington (5)
9. Surviving Suicide: Help to Heal Your Heart by Heather Hayes (4)
10. Dying To be Free: A Healing Guide for Families After A Suicide by Jean Larch and Beverly Cobain (4)
11. The Empty Chair by Beryl Glover (3)
12. Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide by Christopher Lucas (2)
13. After Suicide by John Hewett (2)
14. History of a Suicide by Jill Bialosky (4)
15. His Bright Light: The Story of Nick Traina by Danielle Steel (3)
16. After A Funeral by Diana Athill (2)
17. Memory Slips: A Memoir of Music and Healing by Linda K. Cutting (4)
18. The Los Angeles Diaries by James Brown (4)

Parental Bereavement

1. Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff (5)
2. The Worst Loss: How Families Heal From the Death of A Child by Barbara Rosof (4)
3. After the Death of a Child: Living With the Loss Through the Years by Ann Finkbeiner (4)
4. Life After the Death of My Son by Dennis Apple (4)
5. The Grieving Garden: Living With the Death Of a Child by Suzanne Redfern and Susan Gilbert (4)
6. Beyond Tears by Ellen Mitchell (4)
7. Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt (4)

Journaling/Writing

1. Writing Through the Darkness by Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer (5)
2. Writing As a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo (5)
3. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (5) ///on hold/ library
4. Journal to The Self: 22 Paths to Personal Growth by Kathleen Adams (4)
5. Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott (5)
6. The New Diary by Tristine Rainer (4) ///on hold
7. Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal ///on hold
8. On Keeping a Journal: Leaving a Trace by Alexandra Johnson (4)
9. The Writer's Portable Mentor by Priscilla Long (5) put on Amzon wshlist
10. Writers and Their Notebooks by Diana Raab (4)
11. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (4)

Memoirs

1. Lucky by Alice Sebold (5)
2. Paula by Isabel Allende (4)
3. The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham (5)
4. The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende (4)
5. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Jamison (2)
6. The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux (4)
7. I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (4)
8. How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen (4)
9. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (4)
10. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (4)
11. A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates (4) 
12. Darkness Visible by William Styron (5)
13. Reading My Father by Alexandra Styron (4)
14. Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett (4)
15. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy (4)
16. Blue Nights by Joan Didion (3)
17. My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid (4)

On Suicide

1. By Their Own Hand: Deliberate Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideas in Adolescents by Keith Rodham

Poetry

1. In Memoriam A.H.H. by Lord Alfred Tennyson - post on Josh's blog
2. The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief & Healing - posts on Josh's blog;   "The Dead by Billy Collins
3. Monthly poetry posts:  January,  February,  
4. Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins - posts on Josh's blog 1) Grave and 2) Horoscopes for the Dead

Original Poetry - written in memory of Josh (click here)

Plays

1. Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth by William Shakespeare - see two posts (teenage suicide ideation and grieving parents)
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare - see Death, Grief and Suicide Part I and Part II

Fiction

1. The Pact: A Love Story by Jodi Picoult (4)
2. Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (5)
3. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffengger (5)
4. Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber (4)
5. Ordinary People by Judith Guest (5)
6. Beach Music by Pat Conroy (2)
7. Legend of A Suicide by David Vann (3)
8. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (2)
9. Sea Change by Jeremy Page (3)
10. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow (4)
11. The Hours by Michael Cunningham (5)
12. The Catcher In the Rye by J. D. Salinger (4)
13. The Memoir Club by Laura Kalpakian (2)
14. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (5) - see post

A list of recommended books for survivors of suicide from the American Association of Suicidology. 

Posted by Josh's mom 

http://grieftoreadingjourney.blogspot.fr/

Wednesday's Woe - Emotional Contradictions

Wednesday's Woe

Emotional Contradictions

Reaching out is just not something we find we are able to do. Merry Katherine's best friend reached out by letter upon her graduation from The University of Tennessee complete with her current address, her new phone number, and a picture of her and her new boyfriend of the past 3 years (we have been out of contact for 6 years). This is a child we "loved on" almost as much as we did Merry Katherine, and she was like the sister that Merry Katherine never had. We probably got closer to her than we did to any other of her friends besides one or two precious friends who went all the way back to Kindergarten with her. Yet, when she wrote us, as thankful as we were that she reached out to us, we were both dumbstruck. We couldn't speak. We couldn't write back. We couldn't call. We just went catatonic. It was almost like having a little Merry Katherine standing before us, and we couldn't move.

What is this? We who are so gregarious and love people, cannot love the one person who has been the most loving to Merry Katherine? It makes no sense. It defies logic. It does not line up with who we are AT ALL. The emotional intensity we feel about this contact stirs up so much pain that we become inept, incompetent to reach out in love. Our reaction contradicts everything we would like to do, and of course everything this precious young lady deserves for being our child's very best friend and confidante. We really want to be able to keep up with her, but who we really want to be able to keep up with is Merry Katherine. And because we cannot do that, it just paralyzes us. It just seems cruel that we cannot see our own daughter, so how can we see anyone else who reminds us so much of her?

Tuesday's Trust - Trusting...Amidst a Suspended Life

Tuesday's Trust

Trusting...

Amidst a Suspended Life

Tommy and I listened last night to a talk-radio program by Michelle Rosenthal, a "Post-Trauma Coach" featuring Dr. Robert Scaer, Neurologist and a premier Trauma specialist whom Tommy and I first met and trained under just this past September of 2011. We are purchasing his new book on Trauma that comes out this month, and he is doing a lot of speaking to promote his book. In this talk, he explained how traumatic it is for us to lose a child:

Death of a loved one is a Trauma - A trauma is something that threatens your life - The death of a loved one threatens your life... Death brings trauma into our life --- Your life is composed of the social structures of your life as much as it is the survival of your body!

The death of a loved one is a trauma, especially he says… 

"Frankly, a Parent's Loss of a child is the most traumatic loss there is." 

You go into a freeze response. Helpless, you freeze. If you don't come out of the freeze, you have PTSD or Trauma. You have to process the traumatic memories to heal enough to develop resiliency. And you will need to process this grief over and over and over.

~~~~~

This week, my son put a post in Facebook:

C. S. LewisYour place in Heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.  

~ The Problem of Pain

A child-loss mother friend wrote this next to his post:

What a peace over came me when I read this... My place in Heaven has been made just for me. I can only imagine what (my son) Justin's place looks like :) ... This mama's heart aches for Heaven.

~Patty Sisk Whitaker

~~~~~

I just read a poem of a Child-Loss griever tonight, asking God to give people the grace to understand her need to grieve, her need to still treat her child's birthday as special, and her need to feel her child's nearness. Basically, she, like we, recognizes and understands that the love for our children and the memories we have of them don't ever go away, nor do we want them to...

A Special Birthday

(author unknown)

Please God, make them remember that

Today is a special birthday.

Make them understand that

The memories don't go away.

Bless them, with ears to hear and hearts that care.

Enable them to listen while I share.

Shelter them that they may never know my pain.

Help them to help me know that my child's life was not in vain.

Help them to remember, Lord, that I wish

That my child was here

So we could still celebrate,

To understand that I still

Feel the nearness of my child,

To see beyond my smile and the

Words, "I'm okay."

Please God, just let one remember today

Is a special birthday!

~~~~~

The process of grief, I have found, can mirror that of writing: it is surprising, trying, frustrating, daunting, terrifying, comforting, chastening, challenging, and at times, heartening; grief can provide fellowship with others interested in the experience; it brings out the best in us, and at times the worst, if only because it is utterly human.  It can feel inevitable, but it is so personal, so differently pitched for each, that it can reside across a great gulf.  Yet poetry, like grief, can be the thing that bridges the gap between us, that brings us together and binds us...

I have gathered the poems in this anthology to reveal the many ways poets seek to find words and form to contain loss and to fulfill the reader's need for comfort and companionship in the words of another.  Often, in death, everything else fails.

~From the Introduction to The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, KEVIN YOUNG

Another quote of his reads,

To lose someone close to you is to enter an experience no amount of forethought or hindsight can free you from.  You must live through grief.  You cannot outsmart it, nor think through the fact of someone's being gone, and forever.  You must survive the sorrow.  

~~~~~

Unfortunately, the Child-Loss War civilians (who entail most of our friends and family) do not seem to understand our grief is not about the aforementioned "logical" processes where one just decides NOT to be sad, as if we could "outsmart" grief. No, indeed, we "must survive the sorrow."

~~~~~

People don't seem to understand the back and forth processing that we do, and that we must do in Child-Loss Grief. In the grieving mother's poem, there is an appeal to God to help people understand she still loves her child, and still misses her child and always will this side of Heaven. The all-encompassing message we feel is "I miss my child!" We go back and forth with I wish they were here, and yet remembering C. S. Lewis's sentiment of "Thank You God that my child is in Heaven, and that Heaven is a perfect fit for her!" It is a constant back and forth, a re-interweaving of our foundation that's been blasted out from under us with the death of our child. 

As Dr. Robert Scaer says, you can't just eat the right foods to help you heal through traumatic grief; you have to work through all the hurts, all the confusion, all the feelings of betrayal, all the precious memories, processing them over and over and over again. It's all a part of our "healing" ~ never total healing, but a getting stronger, more resilient over time.

The idea with trauma is that you have to get to the point that you can feel your abject pain and loss and grief, and yet still live your life in the process. People do not understand the hurt never goes away; we just learn to accept it as a part of our lives now.

But the hope, as Elizabeth Edwards so lovingly reminds us... is always there.

The real truth is:

"We never move on, we just get used to the pain"


Even as we ever ponder...


While the new reality for our child, we thankfully cry out along with our child:

I am not gone. My soul

lives on but in a better pace,

Surrounded by the light of God

in all His glory and grace.

Pictures: The first two, thanks to Barbara J. Karrer of Grieving Mothers in loving memory of her "forever-6-year-old" Jonathan,
and the final picture thanks to Cindy Goolsby Martin, In loving memory of her precious "forever-19-year-old" April Michelle Pera

Monday's Mourning Ministry - These Arms of Mine ~Otis Redding ~with Revised Lyrics for Grieving Parents

Monday's Mourning Ministry

These Arms of Mine

~Otis Redding

~with Revised Lyrics for Grieving Parents

On Friday's Faith this week, I shared a poem expressing Tommy's laments about longing to hold our daughter in his arms again. The sentiments from the poem culminated into the final sentiment as Tommy was listening to Otis Redding's impassioned rendition of his spontaneously created song, "These Arms of Mine." When Tommy shared his thoughts with me, I teared up, and then the tears began to flow...

We wanted to share this very familiar song with all of you even though we are sure you too have heard it many times. But we have changed some of Otis's lyrics as his were crooned more in the context of romantic love while ours are wailed from out the depths of our broken hearts which house the desperate  and longing love we feel for our-precious-child-who-is-not-here. 

As you replace Otis's words with ours, it is our hope you will picture your own dear child, and use the very soulful groaning of Otis along with the words of a parent's wail of genuine love that has been forced to go "unrequited." 

“Because, if you could love someone, 

and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . 

then that love had to be real. 

It hurt too much to be anything else.” 

~ Sarah Cross, Kill Me Softly

“When I talk about unrequited love, 

most of you probably think about romantic love, 

but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, 

if they are returned at all. 

An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; 

an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. 

But grief is the ultimate unrequited love. 

However hard and however long we love someone who has died, 

they can never love us back. 

At least that is how it feels...” 

~ Rosamund Lupton, Sister

~~~~~

These Arms of Mine

~Otis Redding

~with Bereaved Parents' lyrics

Revised Lyrics for Grieving Parents:

These arms of mine 

They are lonely, lonely and feeling blue 

These arms of mine 

They are yearning, yearning from missing you. 

And if God would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be 

These arms of mine 

They are burning, burning from missing you 

These arms of mine 

They are wanting, wanting to hold you 

And if God would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be

Dear God, dear God, oh please please

Just let me hold her, just let me hold her, oh

I'm grieving my baby, my baby who had to leave me, oh

I long to wrap my loving arms around, (around my baby) and hold her tight

O I...I..I...need... I need my baby near me,

O I need to hold, O Lord to hold... Dear Lord, I need to hold... my baby so tight.

~~~~~

Original Lyrics

These arms of mine 

They are lonely, lonely and feeling blue 

These arms of mine 

They are yearning, yearning from wanting you 

And if you would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be 

These arms of mine 

They are burning, burning from wanting you 

These arms of mine 

They are wanting, wanting to hold you 

And if you would let them hold you 

Oh, how grateful I will be 

Come on, come on baby 

Just be my little woman, just be my lover, oh 

I need me somebody, somebody to treat me right, oh 

I need your woman's loving arms to hold me tight 

And I...I...I need...I need your...I need your tender lips

Video: http://youtu.be/K-FQL-tJ3ic
Pics, thanks to Grieving Mothers
Quotes, thanks to goodreads.com

Saturday's Sayings - A Mother's Love...

Saturday's Sayings

A Mother's Love...

~A Mom thinks about her kids even when

they're not with her.

~A Mom loves her kids in a way they will never

understand (until they have their own).

~A Mom will be there for her kids when no one

else will.

~A Mom loves her kids even when they neglect

and hurt her.

~A Mom will catch a grenade, take a bullet,

stand in front of a train & ask God to take her

instead of her child.

~A Mom loves her kids to the moon & back & MORE!

~via I Relate Feelings

~~~~~

A Mother's LOVE has NO Expiration DATE.

~via Grieving Mother, Cindy Goolsby Martin, 

 In Loving Memory of April Michelle Pera

~~~~~

- Grief Credo -

I believe grief is a process that involves a lot of time, energy and determination.

I won't "get over it" in a hurry, so don't rush me!

I believe grief is intensely personal.

This is my grief. Don't tell me how I should be doing it.

Don't tell me what's right or what's wrong.

I'm doing it my way, in my time.

I believe grief is affecting me in many ways.

I am being affected spiritually, physically, emotionally, socially and mentally.

If I'm not acting like my old self,

it's because I'm not my old self and

some days even I don't understand myself.

I believe I will be affected in some way by this loss for the rest of my life.

As I get older, I will have new insights into what this death means to me.

My loved one will continue to be part of my life

and influence me until the day I die.

I believe I am being changed by this process. I see life differently.

Some things that were once important to me aren't any more.

Some things I used to pay little or no attention to are now important.

I think a new me is emerging, so don't be surprised - and don't stand in the way.

~via Grieving Mother, Jill Compton

~~~~~

~via La Calvin

~~~~~

~via Grief the Unspoken

~~~~~

~Via Grieving Mother, Jill Compton

~~~~~

~via Grieving Mother, Jill Compton

~~~~~

Letter from Heaven

When tomorrow starts without me,

and I'm not here to see,

if the sun should rise and find your

eyes, filled with tears for me.

I wish so much you wouldn't cry,

the way you did today,

while thinking of the many things

we didn't get to say.

I know how much you love me

as much as I love you,

and each time you think of me,

I know you'll miss me too.

When tomorrow starts without me,

don't think we're far apart,

for every time you think of me,

I'm right there in your heart.

~via "I Miss Those Close To Me Who Are Now In Heaven"

~~~~~

~via Grieving Mothers

~~~~~

"The voice of weeping shall be no more heard."
Isaiah 65:19

• The glorified weep no more, for all outward causes of grief are gone. 

• There are no broken friendships, nor blighted prospects in heaven.

• Poverty, famine, peril, persecution, and slander, are unknown there. 

• No pain distresses, no thought of death or bereavement saddens. 

• They weep no more, for they are perfectly sanctified. 

• No "...heart of unbelief" prompts them to depart from the living God; 

• They are without fault before his throne, and 

• (They) are fully conformed to his image. 

• Well may they cease to mourn who have ceased to sin. 

• They weep no more, because all fear of change is past. 

• They know that they are eternally secure. 

• Sin is shut out, and they are shut in. 

• They dwell within a city which shall never be stormed; 

• They bask in a sun which shall never set; 

• They drink of a river which shall never dry; 

• They pluck fruit from a tree which shall never wither. 

• Countless cycles may revolve, but eternity shall not be exhausted, and 

• While eternity endures, their immortality and blessedness shall co-exist with it. 

• They are forever with the Lord.

• They weep no more, because every desire is fulfilled. 

• They cannot wish for anything which they have not in possession. 

• Eye and ear, heart and hand, judgment, imagination, hope, desire, will, all the faculties, are completely satisfied; and 

• Imperfect as our present ideas are of the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, yet we know enough, by the revelation of the Spirit, that the saints above are supremely blessed. 

• The joy of Christ, which is an infinite fulness of delight, is in them. 

• They bathe themselves in the bottomless, shoreless sea of infinite beatitude. That same joyful rest remains for us. It may not be far distant. Ere long the weeping willow shall be exchanged for the palm-branch of victory, and sorrow's dewdrops will be transformed into the pearls of everlasting bliss. 

"Wherefore comfort one another with these words."

~Charles Spurgeon's Morning Devotional About the Pearls of Heaven, 8/23/2012

Friday's Faith - Your Daddy's Longing to Hug You

Friday's Faith

Your Daddy's Longing to Hug You

I wrote this poem for Tommy as he has expressed its sentiments so many times to me and I wanted to try to capture them in a poem. My writing happened after he expressed the final sentiment of the poem to me just the other day...

I didn't get to hug you that day

That day that ultimately ended your life.

I didn't get to hug you that day,

not in the way I wanted to.

I had mixed feelings about your leaving

that day to go on that trip

and so, could barely move

when you reached over to give me that hug and kiss...

My dreams are filled with hugging you

And not ever wanting to let you go.

My life was filled with loving you

and nurturing you,

And I still long to nurture you;

the longing doesn't stop...

It doesn't stop 

just because you are not here...

But the hug, the hug that was no hug

seems to be my never-ending nightmare.

I realized just the other day:

In order to be able to hug you again

the way I really wanted to hug you that is:

To grab you and hug you and guard you from all harms

Will not happen again,

That is, not until your daddy... 

gets his new arms.

Picture - Thanks to Google Images

Poem - Your Daddy's Longing to Hug You - Angie Bennett Prince (for Tommy) - 10/4/2012

Thursday's Therapy - A Great Resource for Child-Loss Grievers

Thursday's Therapy

A Great Resource for Child-Loss Grievers

A couple of months ago, a dear newly-grieving mother e-mailed me her invaluable resource, and I wanted to pass it along to you, my blog readers, for your edification as well. This dear mother lost her son only four months ago, yet has been so resourceful in her searching the internet for materials that might aid Child-Loss Grievers via blogs (many of which are written by Child-Loss parents), news stories, you-tube songs or stories, and other articles. Just click the link below (or cut and paste it to your address bar and hit "Enter") ~ The picture above shows you some of what you will find when you will go to grieving mother, Jennifer DeWit's "Scoop It" page. When you arrive there, just click on any of the several resources in her collection, and enjoy... and/or weep as befits the occasion!


http://www.scoop.it/t/grief-and-loss 



Blessings to Jennifer DeWit for sharing her resources with me, and for agreeing to let me share them here with you! Jennifer dedicates her hard work to her handsome son Graham she lost just about 19 weeks ago this year. (Grahams picture can be found in the top left hand corner of her posting as you see in the graphic above.) Our prayers go out for the DeWit family as they suffer the grievous loss of their dear Graham.

Wednesday's Woe - A Life Sentence: Death's Impact on the Victim's Family ~Tommy and Angie Prince

Wednesday's Woe

A Life Sentence: 

Death's Impact on the Victim's Family

~Tommy and Angie Prince

The child-loss family has been given a life sentence.  Some parents' children were murdered. The perpetrator may indeed be given a "life sentence" for having done something wrong, yet even then a life sentence does NOT mean a whole life-time. Some of these perpetrators are already out of prison, "going on" with their lives. Yet child-loss parents, no matter how our children have died or been killed, cannot "go on" with our lives for our sentence is indeed for a lifetime, and our only "crime" was to love their child with all of our heart. 

The general public on the other hand, does not "get it": not only can they be ignorant as to the multi-dimensional aspects of child-loss grief and trauma so that we receive little love and support in our "invisible disability." But on top of that, many are ready to unleash judgment on us because we can't seem to live our "normal" lives any more. So then what we receive is NOT support, but what we often DO receive is contempt. And this contempt is piled on top of our already Life-long sentence.

Picture, thanks to Grieving Mothers

Tuesday's Trust - Does Being a Christian Mean Grief Hurts Less? ~Angie and Tommy Prince

Tuesday's Trust

Does Being a Christian Mean Grief Hurts Less?

~Angie and Tommy Prince

Last Tuesday, I began our post with the first quote below. We think it is such a profound statement, we wanted to address it further in this week's post:

I heard a message once that faith does not make the grief hurt any less, and I appreciate the honesty of that because I think we do people an unspeakable disservice when we assume that faith somehow ought to make it less painful of a road to walk. 

~Alina Sato

And, what if we were all to conspire to work together to always present a positive image even to the very negative experiences of life, never showing the underbelly of the pain and tragedy we've undergone and the dilemmas of our faith that must be worked through, over and over and over, after Child-Loss? This person says it so well I think:

Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable. 

~Adrienne Rich

What are our churches hoping to gain when they attempt to reach the lost by carnal means even as they are hoping to produce a spiritual result? It simply does not work that way! The Bible itself, God's Word, does not mince words about the real issues and sins and tragedies that were going on in the lives of His people - the very people whom He had called unto Himself. Are we then to mince words regarding our very real pain and tragedy so that the lost will more likely be drawn into the "Victorious Life" of a Christian?

Much of the Christian theology out there these days suggests we are exempt from tragedies happening if we are a child of God. It's like double trouble being a Christian:  

A) Tragedy is not "supposed" to happen to a Christian.  

B) If it does, then it's not supposed to hurt! 

Tommy and I have actually been accosted by a well-meaning, but incredibly naive, Christian friend of ours when he crossed our paths about a year (only a year, mind you!) after the loss of Merry Katherine, who, the same age as his daughter, went to church together, went to school together, and were friends and fellow-athletes with one another. Evidently shocked that we could still be grieving one year after our great loss, he very uncomfortably asked us, 

"Well, isn't it supposed to make a difference that you have God?!"

Much of the feedback I have gotten from Christians who are not child-loss grievers is that my writing is too "dark." So where does that leave us child-loss grievers who are forced to be honest with our pain (which, yes, is ofttimes "dark,") or we will not heal? 

As Christian, grieving father, Dennis Mansfield commented on his Facebook page that to deal with our grief, it is important that we keep our hearts soft so that we can process through our grief. (See his quotes below.) I agree with him. How would we be able to process through our multi-dimensional grief if we were always feeling the need to play pretend, as if our version of theology were to create a myth of magical freedom from pain in order to protect God Almighty's reputation? 

And if we do not write about our pain, are we denying many thousands of parents the truth of our pain, and therefore the truth of their pain, to cover it over and whitewash it in order to "look" better. That is even more of an offense to our Lord, to not think He can handle His own reputation in the long run, that even though it may look sullied in the short term, it simply is the case that we do not have all the story while we are here on this earth. 

Thankfully, God does not ask us to mince words with our pain. He encourages us to be real, and to reach out to other broken hearts like ours.

Dennis Mansfield's Facebook comment (evidently) to someone's disclosure:

"Each of us has difficult times in our lives. Most of us simply keep it inside. May your hard spot be softened.. for that's the only way to heal. I know this to be true."

Mansfield goes on to introduce the excerpt to his new book about to be released in March, 2013, in which he addresses the loss of his oldest child to drugs:

"This is an excerpt from a chapter that captures the initial deep question that (was) posed to ourselves (or better yet, was thrust at us; and against which we were forced to respond.)

"Though deeply and profoundly sad (a sadness from which I wondered at times if I could ever survive.)"

In his excerpt, he refers back to his deep question…

"At 27 years of age, our beautiful, beautiful boy, Nate, was dead apparently because of drugs. My mind stopped. My heart nearly did, as well. How had our family come to this? I was a leader in the national pro-family movement. I loved my son. What happened to our intentional, planned and purposeful parenting? All the family legislation and marriage conferences we worked on, suddenly seemed to amount to nothing; all the home schooling, all the summer vacation bible schools, all our parental warnings of the outside world and all the energy in constructing a godly Christian barrier to that world, seemingly amounted to nothing. 

"Why had all our efforts not worked?"

Dennis Mansfield's book, Beautiful Nate: A Memoir of a Family's Love, A Life Lost, and Eternal Promises is to come out in March, 2013. Thank you Dennis for your contribution to the bereaved parents' journey.