The Gift that's Missing its Child

I stood there in the pawn shop with tears welling up to the brink of spilling over onto my cheeks.  We’d found the perfect gift for our 13 year old boy.  A starter guitar.  Cool looking, electric, and red.  It’s perfect, even with the few imperfections. 

It’s exactly what a 13 year old boy might dream of.  It gives him the cool-dude image, but being gently used is reasonable for a teenager that at any moment could decide it’s not his thing anymore and tuck that guitar into a corner to never be seen again. And as a parental bonus—an amp with volume control.

I imagined, just for a moment what it would be like to actually give that guitar to the boy we bought it for, what it would be like to know my boy as a 13 year old, and to really know the thing he wanted most for Christmas. 

And that’s where the tears threatened to make their appearance, because you see, there are some children that don’t have gifts for Christmas, but there are also some gifts that don’t have children.

The child for this guitar no longer comes to the tree on Christmas morning, sleepy-eyed with tousled hair looking to see what he got.  His physical presence will forever be missing from our celebrations.  I will not see his big satisfied smile and his first off-key strum on that shiny guitar. 

Oh, how I long for the child that belongs to that gift.

Advent is a time to highlight the longing that comes with the wait. 

During this time of preparation we often see an empty stable or an empty manger waiting to hold the fulfillment of a promise. We see a holy family with someone missing. 

And it reminds me that I, too, am in a period of waiting.  I wait with an empty crib, an empty car seat, an empty bedroom, and an empty space in our holy family for the fulfillment of a promise.  One day, all will be made right.  Every emptiness will be filled.  Perfect love will be overflowing, and every desire of togetherness will be met. 

So until then, we wait with patience, and gentleness, and hope, and sorrow, and joy.  We let the longing that we feel drive us to prepare our hearts and our souls to receive the gift of that promise. 

We wait for the day that missing child will be placed back in our arms.

And while we wait, we honor the gift that has no child by placing it into the hands of the child with no gift.

 We open ourselves to the moments of joy that are still present and we hold space for the sorrow that remains while we wait.  And when that promise of heaven is fulfilled, I will be among all the voices of heaven and earth that are rejoicing.

Why Our Babies aren't Angels . . . and Why it Matters

Written by Mary Haseltine:

My baby is not an angel. And I am glad for it. Almost anyone who has ever lost a child has probably heard it or said it themselves. In the midst of condolences or their own processing of grief, they are told that their child is now an angel. We hear it often:
You’re now a mommy to an angel.
She just received her angel wings.
I have two angel babies in heaven.
Now he’s your very own guardian angel.

There is talk of an “angel day,” jewelry with angel wings representing their baby or loved one, sweet poems regarding our new angels in heaven, and even Catholic companies selling items bedecked with winged babies as a memorial for miscarriage or infant loss. “Angel baby” is a very common term in the miscarriage/infant loss world for a baby that has died.

It is a tricky topic to bring up. Who wants to be the person to gently remind someone that that is not quite the case? That their child, or any loved one that has died, does not become a different creature in heaven? (And certainly, there are often times where it is not appropriate, of course). And anyway, does it even matter? Why not just let people believe whatever they want to in their grief, if it is consoling to them? But the fact remains, and thank God for it, that our babies do not become angels when they die. Nor do any of us. We will never ever in all eternity become an angel.

And that, dear friends, is wonderful and important. Because we become something far more appropriate. We become saints.

See, angels are completely spirit. They are a completely separate form of creation than humans. They do not have and never will have a body (excepting the few cases where God allows an angel to take on physical form). It is impossible for us to fathom in our limited minds how different we are from angels.

“Angels have no bodies…The angels are pure spirits without a body, and their intellectual operations of understanding and willing depend in no way at all upon material substance” (Thomas Aquinas Summa Theo; 51:1).

We as human beings are a union of spirit (soul) and body. You cannot be completely human without one or the other. That is one of the reasons death is so tragic. It separates, temporarily, our body from our soul. But as Christians we believe (as all Christians have since the early Church) in the Resurrection of the Body. Our bodies will rise again. We will have a physical body in heaven. Saint John Paul II declared that we are “worlds apart” from the angels and that man himself enjoys a “unique position in the sphere of creation” (General Audience, July 9, 1986).

When we die, our bodies and souls separate. But at the end of time, at the Resurrection of the Body, we will receive our real, glorified, new bodies. As saints in heaven we will be able to glorify God with our bodies and our souls. We do not know much about those bodies other than conjecture from what we know of Christ’s glorified body after the Resurrection, but we do know they will be physical bodies…and they probably will not include wings.

“In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus’ Resurrection” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 997).

This is wonderful, glorious, happy news! Why? Because you cannot hug an angel.

Without a body, you cannot hug. You cannot touch. You cannot kiss or know the color of someone’s hair or eyes or the way they smile. I will never be able to hold an angel in my arms. But I can do so for a saint. And that means, God willing, that someday I will truly be able to hold my sweet son or daughter in my arms again.

It is we humans who are called in a unique human way to become adopted sons and daughters of God. It is only we who have the capacity to have Christ living fully inside us. And it is only we who can receive Him physically in the Eucharist. In fact, some saints talk about the angels being jealous of us for that reason, but also because in Christ’s redemption of the material world, we can now praise Him in ways that they cannot. It is an acknowledgement of their incredible worth, dignity, and uniqueness to recognize those in heaven as saints rather than angels. Our babies deserve that recognition, too.

Being saints also means that they will be connected with us, in communion we say, more than any angel ever could. We become part of the Body of Christ together in a physical way. When our loved ones pass on to heaven they can intercede for us more than they ever could before. Loving us, caring for us, praying for us, becoming not our guardian angels but our personal and unique patron saints. What a gift that can become to our families and what a consolation in our grief.

May all of our loved ones, those babies we have lost, too, our own personal patron saints, be praying for us now that we can one day join them in heaven

---

Mary Haseltine is a theology graduate and a certified birth doula and childbirth educator. With a passion for building a culture of life through the teachings of the Theology of the Body, she works to bring an awareness and practice of the teachings of the Church into the realm of childbirth, mothering and pregnancy loss. She lives in New York with her husband and five sons. You can find more of her writings at www.betterthaneden.com as well as in her upcoming book about integrating the Catholic Faith into the understanding and experience of childbirth set to be published by Our Sunday Visitor in spring of 2018.

Can Our Marriage Survive the Death of Our Child?

It’s anniversary weekend for us. We’ve now been married for 19 years—14 years since the death of our son.

There’s a statistic floating around that 90% of marriages end in divorce after the death of a child.

Especially in that first year after Lachlan died, anytime David and I were having a hard time aligning in what we needed from each other in our grief, it always made me worry that this was the beginning of the end for us… after all, they say most marriages don’t survive this…

This worry added pain and stress to what was already indescribably hard.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐠𝐞.

Newer data shows that only about 16% of marriages end in divorce after the death of the child, and only 4% of those say it was due to the death.

If 50% of all marriages end in divorce, the low rate of 16% for bereaved parents is quite remarkable.

Highly stressful life events can be polarizing for a couple. The strong get stronger, and the marriages that are really struggling might be stretched to the point of breaking.

It still takes an extraordinary amount of grace, communication, forgiveness, and humility to get through such a stressful life event, but 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝. In fact, you have every reason to believe you will be stronger as a couple for having weathered this storm together.

Healing After the Loss of a Child

The start of a new year can be a strange time for a grieving heart.  It can stir the gamut of emotions including grief, dread, and longing, and maybe even their opposites of joy, hope, and gratitude. A new year means we are a year further from the time we spent with our child and a year closer to seeing them again.

So many people around us are setting their resolutions and intentions about seemingly trite and inconsequential things, while many grieving parents are still just trying to figure out how survive.  For a while, the only resolutions we can muster are to find a way to get through another day.

We are told the loss of a child is something that you never recover from.  You’re reminded frequently that you will never be the same.  While those ideas are meant to help us understand that we have to find a new way of living and being in the world, sometimes they can push us into a state of helplessness and despair, thinking that it must mean we’ll be shattered and miserable forever. 

We won’t ever be the same as we were before the loss, but we don’t have to be forever ruined either.

Healing is possible if we dare to make it our intention.

First, it’s important to recognize that healing after a loss this big is not a matter of recovery, but a process of integration. 

Recovery is what happens after most broken bones. You take a time out and once the bone is healed it works as well as it ever did, and from then on, you usually forget that it was ever even broken.  Integration, on the other hand, is more like healing after an amputation. It means there is permanent change.  Being altered permanently creates the necessity to integrate the loss into a new way of being.  

Viktor Frankl was a psychologist and a holocaust survivor.  In his iconic book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he wrote:

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others and giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” He goes on to reflect, “the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.  It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.” 

We didn’t get to choose whether our children would live or not, but we do get to choose how we will live in their absence.  It is essential to take some time to retreat to regain our bearings, but we can’t wait until we feel completely healed to go back to living—if we take that approach, we may never go back.  Instead, like the concentration camp men giving away their last piece of bread, we have to find the little ways we can live and love and serve right in the midst of our deepest suffering.  This is a powerful path back to a life that feels worth living.

In our grief and pain, we can choose to close in on ourselves, forever withdrawing from the world, and assuming a position of defeat, or we can set an intention to rise up.  The rise won’t happen perfectly.  It is a battle, and sometimes we’ll feel like we’re losing despite our best efforts. 

Yet, with persistent attention to questions like, “What helps? What brings me moments of comfort and hope? What heals? What brings meaning and purpose to my pain? What can I be grateful for, even now?” and doing more of those things, we will keep inching along the path of healing.  As we find our way back to a life that feels worth living, we become like the Boston marathoner who lost her leg in the bombing, and tapping into the powerful human spirit of resilience, set her intention to not let the tragedy steal her life and her joy.  A little at a time she worked her way back to run the race again—this time on her prosthesis.

We may not be able to choose our emotions or the depth of our grief in any given moment, but we can choose the direction we will orient our movement.  We can’t choose how long it takes to win any given battle with grief, but we can choose whether we’ll keep fighting for the life we want to live, or whether we’ll settle into our misery.  We can turn with courage toward healing, or we can turn our backs on it.

Just like an amputee, who must first learn the most basic motions of movement in her new body, we too, must realize that the reconciliation with this new way of being will be slow, but by seeking healing, hope, and meaning then we position ourselves to become the hero of our story and the phoenix that rises from the ashes.

And that sounds like a New Year’s resolution worth making.

Loving a Child that No Longer Lives

My little Lachlan Jon.  He was a sweet baby.  He did all the wonderful and perfectly ordinary things that a baby should do—all those little things that make every parent bumble with pride. 

He loved his big brother and some of my favorite memories are of watching the two of them together. Lachlan would often just sit quietly watching, and soaking in the world around him, but when he wasn’t doing that, he was mastering the art of the tease.  He loved to reach out and grab a fist full of his big brother’s hair just to see what kind of reaction he could get.  Or he would sit near the landing of the stairs, looking at us, waiting to make eye contact, then the second he knew he had our attention, he would flash a mischievous smile and make a dash for the top of the stairs, laughing with glee at the power he had to make us drop everything to save him from a tumble down the stairs.  Oh, he thought that was great fun!

We were living the beautiful ordinary life of having a baby and the relishing in the love that was exchanged with the people around him.

But what does it look like to love a child that is no longer here?

A human being, an eternal soul, and the love between a mother and child cannot be entirely encapsulated in what happens in the physical realm, but our physical bodies are the way we are most accustomed to giving and receiving that love.  Our bodies are the tool we have to communicate ourselves to the people around us.  We show our children our love by giving them hugs and kisses, by snuggling them tight, by feeding and dressing and bathing them. 

How do you love a child when their physical body is not here to have and to hold? 

How do you keep them close when there are no more shared experiences in a physical world of time and space?   

When a body and soul are separated, we step into a new realm of learning how to love and connect to a world that is beyond what we can see, and hear, and touch. 

It is inevitable that time will erode the details of memory, but it cannot erode what is eternal.  It cannot erode him from my heart and soul. 

My connection to Lachlan has shifted to become less about the memories of him (while those are still important too) and more about the essence of him. I cannot love the things that he does, so I am left to just love him.

He is still every bit as much a part of me as my other children are, but I connect to him in a different way. 

I find him in the stillness.  I talk to him in my heart--and often feel his wisdom, his love, and his reassurance. 

This nonphysical connection will never be entirely satisfying to a physical being.  But this nonphysical love shows us something profound. It demonstrates the permanence of the love between a parent and child, and it also leaves me with a hopeful longing for that Christian promise of resurrection. This permanent love drives me to hold onto the hope that His promise is true, which would mean that one day, I’ll be able to show Lachlan my love again in both body and soul. 

On that day, I’ll scoop him into my arms, playfully nuzzle my face into his neck, and rejoice when I hear the sound of his laughter.

The Changes in our Grief Happen So Gradually its Hard to Even Notice Them

This series began as a social media project for Infant Loss Awareness Month. I am going to re-work it just a little to make it fitting to re-tell on the blog.

I remember attending some support groups shortly after my son died, and seeing others in these groups who were now many years out from their loss, still grieving in a pretty intense way.  When I was so fresh in my grief, and still in a place that it still took intentional effort to simply breathe, it was overwhelming to think I’d feel the same way three, or five, or ten years later.

And now, I am going to offer you the gift of my hindsight. I am sitting 12 years out from having to say goodbye to Lachlan. While I still long for him and miss his presence every single day, the intensity of my grief is nothing like it was in the beginning. 

In the words of the good C.S. Lewis, “There was no sudden, striking, and emotional transition.  Like the warming of a room or the coming of daylight, when you first notice them they have already been going on for some time.”  “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different?”

This is the story of grief. Day by day, nothing changes, but looking back on my last 12 years, everything is different.

While I cannot give any timeline of when the shift has happened, my goal for this series is going to be both a look into what my grief felt like in its early days, and a reflection of how that grief feels now.  I hope it is a window into the soul of a grieving mama that both acknowledges the depths of pain that have been traversed and that it will bring a ray of hope to knowing that it’s possible to live again with a peaceful and happy heart.

Grief: A Hero’s Journey

Every great tale that has ever been told is one of tragedy and triumph, fall and redemption, struggle and overcome. Countless myths through all times and cultures are formed around this plot. Joseph Campbell calls it “the hero’s journey.” In those life-altering encounters with grief, it takes nothing short of a hero’s vulnerability and courage to walk through that darkness and struggle to reach the place where light can be found.

In a classic 3-Act form, our story might sound something like this:

Act 1:
The rules of the world are established. We grow up, we form understanding of our world and our God. We develop our hopes and our dreams. We build our careers and our families. We fall in love. And then, as in all the great stories, as Act 1 comes to a close, there is the inciting incident, some unsolvable problem presents itself, the tragedy strikes, the child dies.

Act 2: (Using inspiration from Brene Brown)
“This is the part when we’re in the dark. We’re too far in to turn around and not close enough to the end to see the light....It is where the protagonist looks for every comfortable way to solve the problem, every easy way to solve the problem, every way to solve the problem that does not require the heroes vulnerability. How can I solve it without being vulnerable? It’s not until the lowest of the low moment happens that our protagonist, our hero, realizes, ‘I can’t solve the problem without vulnerability.’”

And so we take the plunge into that vulnerable space. And only there, where we are battling our demons and teetering on the edge of destruction, do we find our light, our meaning, our hope, and our courage.

Act 3:
While looking at ourselves covered it dust, tears, sweat, and blood, knowing our shortcomings and our failures, we also know that we have been transformed for the better. We have let our grief become our teacher, we have learned the lessons. We’ve discovered peace within the sorrow, meaning on our path, growth in humility, empathy and love, and an unimaginable resilience of spirit. We have found redemption. And while we feel like anything but heroes, we have definitely traversed the hero’s journey.

Dear God,

We read in Psalm 139 of the all-knowing and ever-present God, “Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped before one came to be.”

Those ideas are reinforced in Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know well the plans I have in mind for you...”  And in Job 1:21, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away...”

So, did God plan and orchestrate the deaths of our children? I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this question, wanting truth as much as comfort.  

There’s a difference between God knowing the number of our days and God deciding the number of our days.  God is outside of time, so he can see all of human history at once.  He is ever-present to every moment simultaneously, which also means he knows the number of days for each of us, without necessarily deciding for us which day is our last.

We tend to want easy, one-size-fits-all answers, and when something doesn’t fit, we throw it under the rug of “mystery” and stop thinking about it.  As convenient as it might be, I don’t think we can blanket all deaths as the same in where God’s hand lies. Each death is unique in its circumstance.  A child’s accidental death is different from a murder, which is different from a suicide, which is different from a peaceful death at the end of a long, well-lived life. In many cases it seems most fitting to see that God has allowed the death, not caused it.  In my case, this is where I find peace.  My son’s death seems most fittingly to be an accident of a being human in a fallen world—not caused or orchestrated by God because his time was up.

God never wills for a person to be murdered, or for someone we love to be hurting so deeply that they are driven to take their own lives.  Those are deaths that are allowed and known by our God of love, but not decided by him.

In other cases, it seems pretty clear that a life has fulfilled its purpose and it brings peace the to family that the timing of death is exactly how it was “meant” to be. Maybe those are lives that have been lived as they were numbered by God to be.

Disease and death were never part of God’s desire for us.  But rather, they are the effect of human sin.  He does not want these things for us, but comes to meet us in our sorrow—like the day Jesus wept with Mary and Martha at the tomb of their brother. He hates death, and the sorrow it causes, so much that he sent his son, the Word made Flesh, as a means to conquer death and to give us the eternal life he had dreamed for us.

It helps me grasp where God could be coming from in our suffering when I bring it down to a human level. As parents, it can be painful for us to see our kids suffering.  Sometimes, I make them suffer, pushing them to eat their vegetables and clean their rooms.  Sometimes their suffering is not my doing but rather due to accident, cruelty from others, or simply one of the natural hard parts of being human. Sometimes their hard stuff is a natural transition, like the kid you have to peel from your leg to send them into their first day of kindergarten.  Whatever the cause of their pain, I want to be with them and support them through it.

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Mt 7:11

So, was it God’s decision and desire for your loved one to die when and how they did?  I don’t know, but I bet if you dig deep and let the movements of peace and love be your guide, you just might find the answer you are seeking.  Either way, God meets us in our sorrow with a promise of resurrection and eternal life. 

Forgiveness and Humanity After Loss

Learning and practicing forgiveness is essential during times of grief. I was pretty lucky, and the things I needed to offer forgiveness for were pretty minor. People will say and do stupid and hurtful things. Usually they are done without the intent to be awful, or sometimes without even knowing that they did it. Those hurtful things usually happen because someone hasn’t really put themselves in your shoes, or by someone who is trying to make this horrific loss make sense in their own head. I have heard of some pretty terrible things that have been said to newly bereaved parents. Whether it’s something minor or something truly awful, quick forgiveness to the people around you for insensitivities or blunders is SO very necessary. Grieving is an excruciating and exhausting experience as it is, it only stands to be made worse by holding onto hate or resentment toward the people around you.
We are all human. We make mistakes. We say things that weren’t taken as we meant them. We get wrapped up in our emotion and say things that we don’t really mean. We want to do better and be better, but we just don’t always know how to do that. We all love and laugh; we all mourn and suffer. Humanity is our beauty, grace, love and victories, our ugliness, cruelty, hate, and defeat all wrapped up into one heart and soul.
In the beginning (like the first 3 years after Lach died), I wanted to defend my loss as being the worst thing that could happen to someone. The death of a child: the ultimate loss. He was at the age where his personality was really starting to blossom, but I never got to see how that would turn out. So much to love and so much to lose. The only thing that could be worse, I thought, is losing more than one child. It took me a lot of time and a lot of reflection to be able to shift that perspective. There was something worthwhile in that idea in helping me come to terms with the depth of my loss and the way it changed everything, but it also created some distance between me and the rest of humanity.
When you’re in the hole of your own grief, it’s impossible to see anything but the walls that make up that hole. It’s not until you can dig yourself out and stand on the surface of humanity again that you can see those holes are everywhere. Different sizes, different shapes, but they appear throughout the landscape. Pain and suffering and loss is a universal experience. All you have to do to experience it is live long enough. Each loss is unique in its own way with some parts that make it harder to bear than other losses and some parts that make it easier. I have not had to struggle through a marriage that is falling apart and wrestle with how to guide my children through adjustments of a broken home. I have never had to watch my child suffer through extensive medical treatments and illness, I have not been betrayed in situations of physical or sexual abuse, or felt the hopelessness of addiction or the helplessness and frustration of infertility, I haven’t had to bury the spouse I plan to grow old with, I haven’t had to suffer from any major physical illness of my own, or had to face a terminal diagnosis...the list goes on and on. Many have to suffer silently, because their struggles are not things that it is acceptable to admit or talk about.
The more I have reflected on my initial feelings of having experienced the “ultimate loss” the more I realize how mistaken I was. I expected to raise my child and then to send him off to spread his wings, with hopes that he’d live close enough that I could see him and his family on a regular basis. I’d celebrate those gatherings with my husband--Hmm, If I had buried my husband instead, I would have said goodbye to the person I expected to come home to every night for the rest of my life, well beyond the next 18 years, the person God gave me to share the joys and sorrows of living with, my security, my primary support, my teammate, my traveling buddy, the father of my children… with a little more readiness to look at a different situation openly, It’s hard to say that one is really worse than the other.
My suffering is something I can talk about. Many people suffer alone and in shame. Twisted and broken relationships; drug, alcohol, or pornography addictions; mental illness; feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness, shameful mistakes that were made in the past. We can often live with these things and suffer silently, being unable or unwilling to reach out to other people for help. Upon learning of these kinds of struggles, people don’t generally bring you a casserole and swoop in to offer their support. Rather, the sufferer often finds themselves ostracized and estranged more than loved and supported in their quest for healing and recovery.
Even now, on days that I start to feel sorry for myself, and feel some sort of entitlement to sympathy, I am slapped in the face by another, even more tragic story that puts my perspective back in its proper place. There is no “ultimate” loss. Only suffering from different experiences and circumstances with different battles to be fought and won. You could ask almost any person you meet to tell you the hardest things they have been through, and most of them could break your heart with the story they have to tell. It is part of the human experience. If you are talking to someone who has made it through their crisis and back out of the depths, and if you’re willing to notice it, you will find a startling beauty and grace. You are likely find that they are strong, courageous, compassionate, and gentle. Beautiful people are everywhere and they don’t just happen.

Empathy

She showed up first. We were little more than acquaintances at the time. She knew of Lach’s death and she came. She had such a way about her that things seemed better when she was there. She stayed in the background but relieved me of the pressure of having to tend to people. She let people in, she answered the phone, she made coffee, and she gave us a ride to the hospital. We had been away from home for a week or two during the time of Lach’s funeral and burial. She called and asked if it would be ok to clean the house for us. As we were returning home, I couldn’t help but be a little anxious about this new normal that we were going to have to find, and that we were going to have to start back into the daily chores of living. It lightened my heart to find things cleaned and tidy. Lach’s room was untouched, his things as we left them, the fingerprints still on the mirror. There was a vase of fresh cut lilacs on the table, fresh fruit and a new gallon of milk in the fridge. Maybe it’s because she was the first one, maybe it’s because we didn’t know each other well enough that I might have expected it from her, maybe it’s because those things were outside the box of casseroles and sympathy cards, but those were some of my most memorable moments of empathy. Since then, we have grown to be good friends and she has continued to be a wonderful support for me along the way. 
Empathy is as unique as the individual who is giving it. I think they key is just to do something! You don’t have to know the person well to give an incredibly kind and meaningful gesture, even if it is small and simple. Many people out of true love and concern make themselves available, “Call if you need anything. I’m here for you.” Even on the hardest days, I would let the dishes and the laundry pile up before I would ever call someone and ask them to do those things for me. People bring casseroles. They know you’ll have company that needs to eat even if you can’t. Those things are certainly appreciated, but the things that stood out to me were the things that were outside that box. Having someone take care of mowing the lawn, offering to take Westin for a couple hours, getting a group together to help us create a memorial garden for Lachlan, help in creating the memorials, Lach’s Legacy, and the Run for Their Lives, and even simply a coffee date and a loving conversation or a walk around the neighborhood.

Here are my tips on offering empathy to a newly bereaved parent: 
1. Know that there is more going on than what you can see. From the outside, I may have appeared to be holding myself together. I may have been playing with Westin at the park, I may have been talking about my trip to the grocery store, I may have been working just like everyone else. But what was on the inside was something different. I was being eaten up inside that I could give Westin undivided attention without Lachlan there, that the grocery trip was too easy when you’re not wrestling a 10 month old while you do it, or that I could work without a baby in my arms. 
2. Ask. Coming into a conversation with a newly bereaved parent can sometimes be scary. We are unsure of what to say or how to say it, we are afraid we might say something that will be hurtful. Keep in mind that grief is as unique as a thumbprint. There are some common threads, but no two people will look at any part of it the same way. What might bring comfort for one griever, may be painful for the next. Don’t expect to know what they might People who could come to me with an open mind and an open heart were always a blessing.
It was a relief to be able to talk about Lachlan without feeling judged or worrying about falling short of expectations, or feeling like I wasn’t doing it right because I wasn’t doing it as they thought I should. It was healing for me to have a conversation with someone who was willing to ask and ready to hear.
The questions you could ask to show your empathy and your love are endless: Are you able to eat? Are you able to sleep? What are some of the things that have brought you the most comfort? Is there anything in particular that has been hard for you lately? Have you thought about any kind of memorial? How are you feeling about going back to work? Are you finding it hard to take care of your other kids? Can I see some pictures of your baby? Tell me about him… Those kinds of questions helped me to know that someone cared, that they were interested in actually knowing my struggles and not giving any expectations on what I should think or feel or do. Share your own experiences of loss or grief, but remember that they are your own and what worked for you may not be helpful for them. 
3. Do something. Pick out something you would like to do for them and ask for permission to do that. It was much easier to say yes to someone who said, “we would like to take care of your lawn for the next couple weeks, is that ok with you?” than to call someone to say, “my heart hurts too much today, will you mow my yard?” Remember that now every item the child has ever touched is sacred to the parents. They are the physical proofs that the child was there. Make sure to ask before helping with anything that is the baby’s. Even the unfinished bottle, the poopy diapers, and the dirty laundry. A time will come when those things will have to be addressed, but the right time to address them is different for everyone. 
4. Remember. Remember birthdays and anniversaries. Remember that Thanksgiving and Christmas are happening without their child to share it with. Mother’s day is hard when you can’t hold the child who made you a mother. Remember times that you spent with the child and memories of the child. If you didn’t know the baby ask them to tell you about them. When you see something that makes you think of them, tell them that. 

A Lifetime of Holy Saturdays

In the moment of a child’s death, we enter into our own living of the Easter triduum.  We have our hearts pierced, like Mary’s, when our lifeless child is placed into our arms and everything we knew about this world is shattered into a million pieces.  We weep and wail from the depths of our souls. In the one final gesture that we have to offer them, we painfully and lovingly lay them into their tombs.  Then what?

That is where we enter into our lifetime of Holy Saturdays.  Every day of our lives from there on out, echoes that Holy Saturday. It is a time of immense pain when we try to make sense of what has happened.  It is a time where we are brokenhearted, dismayed, our worlds are spinning, and the faith that we thought we had figured out becomes uncertain.  We are still traumatized by the events of yesterday, we grieve deeply for the absence of the one we love, not knowing what will be next.  Yet, there is this glimmer of hope and anticipation.  He told us that death was not the end of the story.  And so, with no real understanding of exactly what that means, we hope for that promise to be fulfilled while we wait in the aftermath of death.  Lingering, grieving, hoping. 

When that long, lonely, painful Holy Saturday comes to its end, the ones who loved Him run to Him, and find that their hope was not lost.  Death was not the end.  There, springing forth after the time of waiting, came life--glorified, rich, and deep, with every moment saturated with meaning and purpose, and a whole new world opened before our eyes.  There is joy. Relief. Gratitude. Adoration. 

Rest in the quiet of your Holy Saturday.  Honoring the grief and the pain, yet holding the hope of His promise. When this day comes to a close, we’ll find that Hope has come to life.

Safe Sleep. Real Life.

It’s easy to teach and preach the ideals of safe sleep.  “Back to Sleep” every time, pacifier, no loose bedding, or stuffed animals… never in a car seat, a swing, a bouncer, in an adult bed, and never ever on the couch.  But then you have a baby.  A human baby with their own preferences and needs, being taken care of by parents who happen to be human too.  Humans who need to sleep or sometimes just get a few things done, like prepare a meal, wash the puke and poop-stained load of laundry, or take a shower...  That ideal of safe sleep can sometimes seem like an unreachable pedestal.  And when that’s the case, we either feel guilty for not “doing it right” or we justify to ourselves why it is unnecessary to try to follow those guidelines… “What are the chances, really?  …My baby can’t sleep that way and never will.  …He only likes to sleep this way.  …She spits up too much to sleep on her back. …He’s getting a flat head and they sleep better on their tummy anyway…”  The list goes on.

Safe sleep is important to me.  After my little man died of SIDS, I know too well the depths of despair that come with such a loss.  I can’t bear the thought of ever having to bury another one of my children.  That means I want to reduce their risk of death in EVERY possible scenario, but a safely sleeping baby is definitely a very high priority to me.

As much as I want to perfectly follow every safe sleep recommendation every time, with a new baby at home, I’m reminded that it is an ideal to work toward, a practice, and not an unbending checklist to complete.  In those first weeks, there were many nights that I’d be up for hours during the night with a teeny-tiny newborn that just couldn’t seem to relax and sleep outside of Mama’s arms.  I tried and tried, picking her up and laying her back down in the bassinet beside me repeatedly, and when my exhaustion had had enough, I caved.  I snuggled her next to me in my bed and we both finally found the sleep that we so desperately needed.  But the thing to remember, is that when we have to cave and compromise, we don’t have to throw all caution to the wind.  When she ended up in my bed, I moved all the pillows well away from her and I only pulled my blankets up over my legs so they wouldn’t accidentally get moved too close to her face.  I caved where I needed to in the moment and I mitigated the risk where I could… and I thought to myself, the bassinet isn’t working tonight, but we’ll keep practicing.  Little by little she got more comfortable in her safest sleep environment, and here we are just a month later and she’s sleeping six hours at a time, on her back, and in the bassinet, and she even seems to sleep best there.  It’s wasn’t without effort, practice, and a few failures on both of our parts, but it feels good to know that now she is able to sleep well in the place that is best for her.

Occasions for compromised sleep environments are everywhere.  Know what they are and what makes them dangerous.  Know which things are the riskiest, find ways to improve the environment even when it’s not perfect.

Don’t let the inability to follow safe sleep recommendations perfectly be the excuse to give them no heed.  Be gentle with yourself when it doesn’t work and keep trying to make them the best that you possibly can.

Opening to the Pain of Loss

When, in a single moment, we were thrown into the depths of grief with a pain as big as the loss of a child, it is only natural to protest this new and horrific experience with every bit of our being.  A loss this big infiltrates every single moment of our lives, with tentacles reaching into every thought, every breath, awake or asleep, into every mundane task and every meaningful moment.  It is all consuming.  It is dirty and messy.  It is excruciatingly painful.  This grief is an unwelcome invasion, and by all outward appearances, seems to be an enemy, the thief that came in the night and stole our joy and our purpose.

We naturally fight this enemy of pain, flee from it, or lay limp in defeat.  We hurt like we’ve never hurt before, so we clench our fists and our jaws, scrapping for the upper hand that we can never seem to find.  “It shouldn’t be this way,”  “It’s not fair,” “I can’t,” or “I won’t, live like this.”  When we’re too exhausted to fight, then we turn and flee. We will just do whatever it takes to avoid uncomfortable moments, to dodge painful feelings and memories, and when running from those feelings doesn’t work, maybe we will give up hope on a meaningful life and ever finding joy again, surrendering to the thought that I am forever broken and ruined.  These are natural responses.  Our bodies and our brains are designed to react in “fight or flight” to threatening situations to help us avoid physical harm.  But this threat is of a different nature and it doesn’t have to be this way…at least not forever.

What if…just what if…we dared to look at that pain through a different lens and view it as a teacher, rather than an enemy?  The constant ache of missing a child is so much to bear on its own.  Are we really helping anything by fighting the invisible enemy of pain, or are we just adding a tremendous struggle to our already heavy burden?  What if we unclenched our fists and laid the boxing gloves aside? What if we softened our eyes and our hearts and saw this pain as a teacher bringing growth to our lives.  Some of the greatest teachers are the ones that demand the most of us.  They present challenges that seem impossible and push us way outside our comfort zones. The lessons are painful, yes, but if we give them space to take root, something beautiful just might grow.  

This teacher of pain has too many deep lessons to think we can tackle them all at once.  This is a subject will take a lifetime to learn.  If there’s a task that’s too big in the moment, that’s ok, maybe it’s a lesson to be tabled for now and approached again at another time. But bit by bit, we can learn from our pain and let our grief be our ally to growing in love and wisdom.

When I stop to consider this pain of loss as my teacher, rather than an enemy to evade at all costs, everything inside of me softens a bit.  I am reminded of the experience of labor.  It is an all-encompassing physical pain.  I can fight that, tightening every muscle of my body, dreading with anxiety every contraction that’s coming, and in doing so, add exhaustion, tension, and emotional distress to my pain…or, I can know that while this is a painful experience, it is a natural one.  I can know that I have a good support team, that I will be ok, and that something beautiful and life-changing will come from this experience.  In being open to the pain rather than fighting it, I change the experience entirely.  It is much the same in the pain of loss.  When I stop fighting the experience, the sadness remains, but so much tension, bitterness, and anger fades away.  And with that, my eyes are opened to the opportunities for growth, and I can see the beauty that has emerged from the dirty, the messy, and the ugly.

Ask yourself; what are the lessons, both good and bad, that have come from my grief and the pain of my loss?  How have I changed for the better because of this?  How do I want to change because of this? What are the beautiful things that have grown from these ashes?  What am I still learning?  What are the beautiful things I would like to see emerge in my life from this experience?

Go ahead.  Let something beautiful grow.

Prescription for Sorrow

Saint Thomas Aquinas is known as the Angelic Doctor. He was a philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church.  While he lived in the 1200’s, the clarity and truth that he taught has continued to hold value even to the present day.  He had a deep understanding of the human person, an uncanny ability to see subtleties clearly, and to articulate his thoughts.  He is well known for combining both profound faith and solid reason to make arguments that are hard to deny.

So what does that have to do with my grief?

Check out: pintswithaquinas.com

I was listening to the “Pints with Aquinas” podcast one day, and the topic happened to be “Aquinas’ 5 Remedies for Sorrow” (episode 39, for those who might care to check it out).   As I listened, I was struck by how much it resonated with the sources of comfort that I had stumbled into on my own quest to remedy my sorrow.  When your child dies, you find that you plummet into what is argued to be the deepest sorrow known to man.  I felt like I was groping around aimlessly in the dark, hoping to grab ahold of something that would ease my achy heart.  If only I’d landed on this treasure from Aquinas sooner, it may have been a flashlight in the dark…a tool to shed light on what could be sources of meaningful comfort.

Joy and sorrow all mingled into one picture as one my sons studies the headstone of another.

Much of what Aquinas outlines is intuitive…they are things that as human beings, we can discover on our own.  The problem most of us have, is that the true wisdom that leads us to peace and healing gets all jumbled up with things like cultural attitudes, the expectations from the people around us, and our own insecurities, fears, and doubts.  It gets hard to figure out what to keep and what to set aside.  It’s easy to reach for the things that numb us, and the pain seems better momentarily, but after the passing of time…hours, months, or years…we find that those things have really not helped us heal and the work of grief is still sitting in a disheveled pile, waiting for us to tend to it.

I can’t help but wonder, if I had found this list earlier, would it have helped me be more intentional about how I grieved?  Maybe I could have let my tears flow more freely, knowing (from the wisdom of the wisest) that these tears weren’t a sign of weakness, but a sign of healing.  Here’s the prescription from the doctor.  May you find confirmation of your deepest needs, security, and comfort for your sorrow!

The Angelic Doctor’s Prescription to Remedy Sorrow:
Paraphrased for easy reading

1. Weeping:
Thomas Aquinas outlines two main reasons that tears and groans bring comfort to our sorrow.  The first reason is that when we are hurting emotionally and we try to keep it all shut up inside of us, our souls become even more intent on the sorrow.  However, if we allow the pain a path of escape, rather than turning in on ourselves, we can turn our attention outward and the inward sorrow is lessened.  The second reason is that there is some level of comfort that comes from the honesty of showing on the outside what we are feeling on the inside.  When our actions match our internal disposition, there is a level of pleasure that accompanies that congruency. 

How many times did I feel like bursting into tears, and tried to keep them all trapped inside because it wasn’t a good time or place to cry, or simply because I was afraid to break the flood gate?   I thought my tears had no “purpose” so I’d wrestle with them to keep them in.  It is exhausting to try to hold that in.  Eventually, I gave up trying.  When I was in the store and something triggered my grief, I just let the tears do their thing.  A little bashful about it, yes, but it brought so much more relief than trying to hold them in ever did!  It turns out those tears do have purpose…their purpose is to bring healing to my soul.

2.   Pleasure:
The doctor explains that pleasure is a kind of relaxation or peacefulness in our souls that occurs when what’s happening in the moment matches well with our wishes, hopes, and desires; while sorrow, on the other hand, is what we feel when there is a chasm between we want and what actually is.  He gives us the analogy that pleasure is to sorrow, what, in bodies, rest is to weariness.  Sorrow is a sort of weariness that comes from the gap that we feel, and pleasure is a rest in something that feels good or right or beautiful.  Just as rest brings relief of weariness-- no matter what the cause of the weariness, pleasure brings some relief to sorrow--no matter the source of the sorrow.

The sorrow that comes with a grief as big as the loss of a child can be all consuming.  We are not capable of grieving and mourning 100% of the time…we need those little breaks that come from doing things that we enjoy, being with people who make us smile, in moments of lightness and laughter.  It’s too easy to feel that doing something we enjoy, or daring to laugh or smile, is somehow a betrayal to our loved one and our grief.  Aquinas shows us that finding times of enjoyment is not a betrayal, but an honoring of our grief.  We know how deep our sorrow is and we can also know how essential moments of pleasure will be to bringing long-term healing and comfort.

3.   Sharing Sorrow with Friends:
While it is natural to find that having the sympathy and understanding of friends and family is a meaningful source of comfort, Aquinas sees there are two reasons for the comfort.  The first, he says, is because since sorrow has a depressing effect, it is like a weight that we strive to unburden ourselves of.  When we see that others are saddened by our sorrow, it seems as though others are sharing in the burden of the weight and the load of sorrow becomes somewhat lighter.  The second, and better reason, he states, is that because when friends sit with us in our sorrow, we see that we are loved by them…and feeling loved is the ultimate pleasure, and every pleasure eases sorrow, it follows that sorrow is lessened by a sympathizing friend.

How true this is!  There were two main groups of people that were my sources of comfort.  One, was other bereaved parents.  They knew the burden, the ache, and the loss in a way that no one else can.  They shared my sorrows, relieved my anxieties, offered me hope of healing, and lightened that heavy load.  I was surprised at how connected I could feel with complete strangers or with people I barely knew because of this shared experience of loss of a child.  The people who entered into my life because they had walked a similar road were an unexpected gift and a Godsend to me.  It is largely what motivates my work of helping other bereaved families find those connections.

The second group of people were the people who loved me before my son died, and continued to reach into my life afterwards.  The ones who shared my sorrow, not because they knew what it was like, but because they loved me.  I concur with the Doctor. The second reason is the better reason.  While I have made many dear friends from connecting with bereaved friends, there is something deeper, more soothing, and more comforting that comes from a sorrow that is shared out of love.

4.   Contemplating the truth:
Aquinas asserts that the greatest of all pleasures consists in the contemplation of truth.  Since we know from what was discussed already, that all pleasure softens our pain, then contemplation of truth is a valuable remedy to our sorrow.  He also explains that the more comfort that you find from this remedy, the more perfectly you can be considered a lover of wisdom. He says, “And therefore in the midst of tribulations men rejoice in the contemplation of Divine things and of future happiness...”

Contemplating truth was a huge piece of my grief-work.  The death of a child had no place in my world view, nor in my picture of an all-loving God.  Yet, the hope that comes from the possibility of being reunited in heaven, made it impossible for me to walk away from the God that promised that.  I needed to understand how suffering and a loving God can co-exist.  I needed to know everything that is available about heaven and what it’s like…there were so many questions to be answered! What is it like there? Who is looking out for him and taking care of him? What might his experience be like? Does he feel the pain of our separation?

These things are hard.  I had feelings of anger and betrayal toward God that I needed to work through.  It didn’t happen all at once, but in tiny fragments.  The work is not done.  I’m still growing, still find new perspectives and understanding that is helpful.  But this is the ultimate source of long-term healing and peace. A healing and comfort that is deep rooted and I think is one that will withstand in the storms that are undoubtedly yet to come.

5.  Warm Baths & Naps:
Lastly, Thomas Aquinas prescribes bodily comforts, such as baths and naps.  He says, sorrow, by its nature is offensive to the physical body; and consequently, whatever restores the body to its due state of wellness, is opposed to sorrow and lessens it.  Moreover such remedies from the very fact that they bring nature back to its normal state, are causes of pleasure…and we know well by now, that pleasure assuages sorrow.

Contemplating truth and warm baths & naps.  The juxtaposition is almost funny.  Yet, I found those bodily comforts also had a valuable place in my acute grief.  I was amazed at how much my body hurt, how physical grief could be.  Every muscle was tense, my empty arms ached, I could feel the sharp edges of my broken heart, headaches and nausea became frequent companions.  I needed to relieve the pain of my body.  I found myself soaking in a hot bath regularly.  I found reprieve in a good nap.  I found that frilly coffees were a delightful comfort food.  A good run, breaking a sweat, and moving my tight muscles, and the endorphin rush that comes with it found a regular place in my search for comfort. 

Being medically minded, the analogy that comes to mind is this: Like many things in medicine, when a patient presents in severe pain, we dull the pain with a pain medication which is valuable to the comfort of the patient, but then we have to work to heal the body on a deeper level.  Pain medicine is not enough for the long haul, but they sure do help get through the most excruciating pain.  Baths and naps are the pain medicine, the immediate comfort; contemplating truth is the deeper healing plan.

Take these remedies and hold them near, explore them, and see if this wise old Doctor really knows his stuff.  I think you’ll find that he does!

Approaching Christmas Without You

For the Children's Memorial Garden being built in Rapid City, I was asked to write briefly about Lachlan in a "feature the children" series.  (To see more on that Memorial Garden click here)   Here's what I wrote: 

“As Advent is here and Christmas approaches, the ever-present sting of your absence sharpens. My heart aches at missing the opportunity to see your eyes dance as you run to the arms of Santa to tell him your wish of presents. I feel the emptiness of what should be your space in our home. Yet, even in the sorrow and the sting, there is a bigger joy and hope. My soul dances at the thought of you running eagerly to the arms of Jesus…not for presents, but for His presence. Perfect Christmas joy, peace, laughter, and celebration in the place we will ultimately call home together. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas here scurrying to buy all the perfect presents, I am reminded that our bigger preparation is for the perfect and eternal gift of our ever-present Christ and the joy, hope, peace and love that is perfect in Him.

Christmas without him wasn't always a place of hope, peace and joy.  

Reading through what I had to say this year, highlights for me how much my grief has transformed with time. Hope, peace, and joy have re-emerged slowly over the years, so gradually that it almost goes unnoticed. Like the sun that slowly rises and the light that gradually returns.  The change is imperceptible moment to moment, but then all at once, you realize the day has come. Now, nearly 10 years later, my grief is softer than it once was.  The joy that I feel now wasn't always there, and the hope I describe used to feel light years away.  While I still miss Lachlan every day, and especially at Christmas, it's not like it was that first Christmas...or the several after that.  In that first Christmas without him the joy was nowhere to be found.  I felt some obligation to paint a happy face, to somehow try to find a way to have some Christmas cheer, to let my toddler have a "normal" Christmas even though it was the last thing I wanted to do.  I couldn't do it and I felt torn.  I hadn't yet learned to be happy and sad.  I didn't know those opposites could co-exist.  I had to take that heap of emotions and learn to let it be.  Learn to be ok with a different kind of Christmas, to do what I could, and not beat myself up over the things that I couldn't.  When we fight our painful experiences, we make it harder on ourselves! Like in labor, in those moments of excruciating pain, you can fight it with your whole body and mind; or you can let it be, breathe through it, hang on for the ride, and know that it won't always be like this. 

If this is your first Christmas without your child...let it be.  Let it be whatever it is.  Maybe some shared happiness, maybe mostly sad, maybe too hard to acknowledge, maybe it's going through the motions of a "normal" Christmas, maybe it's not doing any of it.  Maybe it's starting a new Christmas tradition and finding a way to acknowledge the empty space.  Maybe it's not planning anything and just getting through the day as it comes.  However it is this Christmas, it's ok to let it be. It won't always be like this.  It will soften and one day you'll look back and find the grief and the joy of the season have woven themselves together to create something new and beautiful. 

Why I talk about my dead child on social media

I know, it makes many of you squirm a little…or maybe even a lot.  It’s uncomfortable.  Our society doesn’t do death, or pain, or life-changing grief, so we follow the crowd and look away.  Pain that can’t be cured is like leprosy…it must be pushed aside, driven to the outskirts and left to fend for itself.  Society teaches us that it’s acceptable to rally around the child fighting cancer. We all get warm-fuzzies in supporting that family and that child in their fight.  It feels good to support a cause like that, but when death wins that battle we quickly drift away.  What society does not teach us is how to be present to a pain that can’t be cured.  It’s too hard.  It’s awkward.  We don’t know what to say. The reality of a dead child is too much to bear, and our culture encourages us to bring a casserole and then carry on with our lives, not daring to take the time to truly peer into that grief.   

So, when I talk about my grief and the child that is no longer in my arms, it’s often easier to pass by the post without acknowledging.  We’d much rather protect ourselves from the reality of unjust tragedy, however, that tragedy is now my world. I can no longer look away.  When I share my world, it’s easier for others to wonder if I’m stuck in my grief, if I’m seeking pity or attention, or if I’m broken forever, than it is to imagine a pain that deep.  Society implies that if we openly express our grief, we are immature, needy, or we simply can’t cope with our grief...so it’s easy to assume that I must be doing something wrong. 

The truth is, expression of my grief is the work of mourning.  There are so many thoughts and emotions bottled up inside of me that I have to get them out!  That is exactly what mourning is; it is the outward expression of my grief.  This mourning, this outward expression, is not just a small part of the grieving process, it is ESSENTIAL to it.  I’m not making my thoughts about my broken heart and my dead child public because I’m stuck; I do it because I’m healing.   Alan Wolfelt, a leading grief teacher and expert points out, “ Mourners who continue to express grief outwardly are often viewed as ‘weak,’ ‘crazy,’ or ‘self-pitying.’ The subtle message is ‘Shape up and get on with your life.’ The reality is disturbing: Far too many people view grief as something to be overcome rather than experienced.”

When I talk about my child, I am doing my grief-work.  My world has been torn apart.  Nothing makes sense anymore.  My feelings, and emotions, and the chaos in my head are overwhelming to me, too.  But the thing is, that chaos is normal for someone who is grieving.  While anyone who has grieved intensely will tell you how normal that “crazy” feeling is; yet it feels anything but normal to me.  I need to be affirmed in my feelings and to be reminded that I’m not as crazy as I feel. 

I tell you about my dead child because telling my story helps close the gap between my head and my heart.  My head knows that my child is no longer here.  That he is dead.  My heart can’t possibly bear that.  My heart has dug in its heels and refuses to come along on this ride.  I must coax it gently into this new world that my child is not a part of.  

I know, my mourning makes you feel helpless and no one likes to feel that way.  In order to heal from my hurt, first I have to explore the depths of it.  As Alan Wolfelt puts it, “To honor your grief is not self-destructive or harmful, it is self-sustaining and life-giving!”  I need to know that there is good reason for the depth of my pain and I need to be affirmed that the loss of a child arguably the most painful loss that can be endured.  I need to know that every sting, ache, stab, crippling pain, and unexpected flood of tears is acceptable and normal.  Please don’t tell me not to grieve, or not to cry.  Don’t encourage me to “be strong”, or to pick myself up and carry on.  The most helpful thing you can do for me is something our culture teaches us to run from. If you want to help me heal, then sit with me for a moment in my sorrow.  Be brave enough to feel my pain for just a moment.  I need to know that while the depth of my pain is as it should be, and then you may gently remind me that I won’t always hurt so fiercely.  Remind me of the hope for meaningful life to re-emerge and that joy won’t always be lost in the shadows. But as you give me that reminder, I ask you to remember to hold space for my sorrow.  I will heal, but I will never be the same.  I will experience joy and laughter, but it will always be tangled with the strings of sorrow.

The grief work after the death of a child is a lifelong job.  Yes, it will be most intense in those first years, but it will need to be re-visited regularly for the remainder of my existence. 

Please be patient with me while I mourn. Share my pain with me for just a moment, in those times that I reach for comfort.  Every time you see a post that makes you want to look away, don’t see me as weak and needy.  Instead, dare to see my courage.  Know that in my weakness I am being strong and courageous.  It takes tremendous energy and courage to stare into the depths of my pain.  Some of the world most beautiful people and missions are a result of intense sorrow.  So remember that by giving my attention to those ashes, I am cultivating ground that can allow something profoundly beautiful to grow.