Thoughts From a Grieving Mother

I need to say his name without bringing everyone to tears.

I need his life to be included in the count of children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

I need patience and understanding when a wave of grief brings me to my knees, even if you think it’s been “long enough”. . . . .

I need kindness on birthdays and understanding on holidays.

I need to stay in bed and a reason to get out of it.

I need an extra hug and respect for my space.

I need someone to ask how I am doing and want to know the real answer.

I need a “handle with care” sticker for my heart. My emotions have been fragile since the day I said goodbye.

I need patience and reminders for my mind, part of it will always be somewhere else.

I need patience when I’m not being the friend, sister, daughter and wife I used to be.

I need you to accept that my grief will last until I take my last breath.

More than anything, I need you, your support (without judgment), your friendship, your understanding. . . . .

. . . . .a lifetime is an impossibly long time to wait to hold my child again.

-adapted from - fourplusanangel.com-

Please Don't Get Over It

A good read by rootsdowndeep.com

We sat with our friends exactly two weeks after they buried their firstborn son. Baby Ollie’s bouncy seat was empty by my feet as we looked through pictures of his gorgeous almond eyes and rose petal lips, and his daddy told stories about the two days they were face to face with him.
Ollie’s daddy talked and his mama smiled gently, and their faces looked changed from the last time we saw them. They’ll never be the same again.

Time heals, yes.

Life will continue and even be sweet again. They know this.

But their eyes will always hold shadows that weren’t there before.
As if they could be anything but different after laying a part of their hearts in the Indiana soil.
There are things about this world that knock dents in the core of us. Broken, terrible things like baby-sized coffins, and cancer that steals mamas, and conversations ended by old age, and unmendable relationships, and sin-wounds that breed more sin-wounds. There are things that upend us and shift our souls in ways that make it hard to recognize ourselves.

We grieve with hope.

Yes.

Yes, we do.

But that does not mean we get over it.
Please don’t get over it.

Grieving friend, dear friend whipped sideways by pain, those shadows are in your eyes because your soul is deepening, stretching, overlapping into eternity. That isn’t something to be gotten beyond.
Don’t get over it. Don’t get over the things that lean hard into your heart, those things that crush your ease and change the way you see. Don’t get over the ways your spirit is being moved and reshaped, pressed into the likeness of the One who carried His scars beyond the grave.

Grieve with hope, yes.

Not hope that things will ever be the way they were before, because they won’t.
Not hope that you will forget the ache of this season, because you won’t.
Grieve, friend, with the hope that the flimsy things of this world will never be enough to satisfy you, because you know there is something more. Weep, feel it deep, and trace the gentle face of the One who comes close to catch your tears. Cry with the hope that we are held firm, and none of this is wasted. Wrestle through it, talk it out, take the time to break open with hope, because the deepest healing comes to those who are broken all the way down.
Let hope strengthen your shivering bones, straighten your slumped shoulders, open your heavy eyes, and draw you forward into a story that’s wider and deeper than you ever knew was possible. Let hope quiet your soul so you can hear the bright echoes of eternity just around the corner.

It really is coming.

So please, please don’t get over it.
We’re not meant to stay the same, to carry on as we always have. What a tragedy that would be.
God is already picking up those shattered pieces of the you that was and putting them together in a new way, a breathtaking shape that catches His glory and flings shimmering hope into the dark corners of a grieving world.
Lift your changed eyes, friend. It’s beautiful.

“God blesses those who realize their need for him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them. God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” ~Matthew 5:3-47

Why You Will Never Fully Understand My Grief Experience as a Bereaved Mother

(Still Standing Magazine)

The experience of every bereaved mother (or father) is unique and so is their grieving experience. You can never fully understand another bereaved mother’s experience, even if you sit with her through the dark of the night, talk to her for hours, cry endless tears in compassion. I’ve tried. And I might have one advantage: I myself am a bereaved mother.

Let go
As much I have been hoping that I could, I can’t fully understand what another bereaved parent is going through. I still do my best at understanding the bereaved families I’m working with and according to them, I’m doing a great job but I have let go of the unattainable: to totally and utterly understand their despair.

In that letting go, there is something else that opens up, something with far greater potential. Rather than trying to enter their experience and in that wondering how that would feel within me, I stay with them. It takes courage and compassion to totally be with someone else, without an ounce of the self who is ‘wanting to make it better for them’ or ‘helping’ them. After all that’s my job, supporting them in finding healing. But here is the thing: the pain of missing someone who is no longer physically present is not something that needs healing or fixing.

Grieving parents have something in common. They must continue their life without seeing their babies grow up to be children or their children to grow up to become adults. Grief is like unrequited love but one where the relationship hasn’t ended even though the person has left and is not contactable. That’s the paradox of child loss.

What if I’m not a bereaved mother?

As someone who hasn’t experienced the loss of a child, you can still be there for bereaved parents. You can walk side by side with them and support them with your love. You don’t need to understand their experience to accept how they express or live with it.

So, be there. Don’t try to fix them but stay with them through the darkness. The presence you show by your willingness to fully be there, is enough. You are enough, even if you don’t fully understand the grief experience.

What Bereaved Parents and Those Who Care For Them Need to Know

The following is an article that I copied and pasted. The entire article is SPOT.ON. but pay special attention to paragraphs in bold print as those are the heart of the article.

What Bereaved Parents and Those Who Care for Them Need to Know

“It gets worse before it gets better.” Those were the words the pastor offered to a newly bereaved couple whose daughter had died unexpectedly.

And you should know that he is right.

Bereaved parents are stunned when four months, six month, nine months down the road they find their grief remains overwhelmingly raw.

The shock has worn off.

Their hearts have been flayed open and the wound is still bleeding.

It doesn’t help that those outside the loss community expect healing to be happening when the magnitude of the loss is still seeping into the soul.

The depth of loss has not been fully realized when the funeral is over. No, in the weeks and months and years ahead bereaved parents are confronted with the realization that they didn’t just lose their child but that they lost the hope, dreams and expectations they held for that child as well. They lost their child’s future, but they also lost their own future expectations (marriages and grand babies, to name a few) and they grieve for both what their child will never experience and what they themselves will miss out on.

Frequently bereaved parents squelch their grief as they try to remain strong for their surviving children. They can’t fall apart because they are so desperately needed by those too young to understand or to express their grief in healthy ways. That’s one reason why the average length of time it takes for parents to work through the grief process averages five years or more – the longest bereavement period of any loss known to man.

My daughter’s grief counselor told her that many teens don’t grieve over lost siblings for four or five years. They experience delayed grief which I think results from trying to be strong for their parents. The entire home is in upheaval. The sense of security that was taken for granted has been exposed for the fallacy that it is. Gone is the naïveté that we can protect those we love from harm. It’s a frightening experience.

It’s truly terrifying.

And parents and siblings are often left dealing with problems that arise in the wake of the death. Financial pressure, legal issues, spiritual, emotional and health problems assault the family. Marriages and family relationships quake in the aftermath.

While the outside world expects healing to begin, bereaved families are often sorting through compounding problems. They are reeling from the fallout and haven’t really begun the healing process.

Bereaved parents and the outside world need to know and understand that grieving the loss of a son or daughter – regardless of their age – is the most devastating and destructive loss experience. Both the bereaved and those who care for them need to anticipate and make accommodations for a long and drawn out grieving process, because it definitely gets exponentially worse before it gets better.

For those who care about the bereaved, grieve with those who grieve. Let go of the expected length of bereavement. Don’t reduce grief to a simple bid for sympathy or pity. And be ever aware that for the grief-stricken feeling bad feels bad, but feeling better feels bad too. It’s a psychological hurdle grieving families frequently face. There is a battle raging within the hearts and minds of loss parents. What they know to be true doesn’t “feel” true and they struggle to reconcile the conflicting messages received from the heart and mind. The solution is not as simple as mind over matter.

People often ask me what to say or do for someone who is grieving. So many times I’ve heard others advise just be present and listen. Both those things are helpful but not necessarily healing. In my experience validating feelings is the single most healing thing you can provide the bereaved.

Grief, for a bereaved parent can be likened to a pressure sore, more commonly known as a bedsore. Pressure sores develop when an individual stays in one position for too long. Unlike other wounds, a pressure sore grows deeper instead of spreading wider as other wounds do. They can be deceptively dangerous because they rapidly eat through layers of flesh below the affected skin to the tendons and the bones beneath if not treated promptly. Treatment involves the painful scraping away of the dead tissue to reach the healthy tissue below. Ointments is applied, the wound is packed and covered and daily cleaning is required to prevent the wound from getting deeper.

Likewise, grief gets worse and deeper when exposed to the pressure of society to project a positive outlook or to work through their grief in the timeframe others deem appropriate. Shaming and silencing the bereaved for failing to heal, wallowing in grief, or throwing a pity party deepens the wound by invalidating the worth of the loved one lost. Venting the negative feelings helps to clear away the infection but refusing to validate those feelings is tantamount to leaving the wound exposed to the dirt and debris floating in the air. The wound gets worse and healing takes longer as the grief-stricken seek the understanding of others.

Validation is the antibiotic ointment applied to promote healing. The presence of “safe friends” (those who don’t criticize or try to fix the broken) is the packing and covering which provides a barrier between the open wound and the influences of the outside world. Frequent validation and affirmation keep the emotional wound clean providing an environment that encourages healing. The bad must be flushed out before the good can replace it. Unfinished grief occurs when we slap a bandaid on without cleaning and disinfecting the wound. The wound may no longer be visible to the outside world but is quietly festering beneath the bandaid that it covers.

For the bereaved, be gentle and patient with yourself. You’ve been deeply wounded and deep wounds heal slowly. As the old song says, “The road is long with many a winding curve.” Grief isn’t supposed to feel good.
It gets worse before it gets better; but it can and does get better.

“What I Wish Everyone Understood About Child Loss”

Nobody ever plans on child loss becoming part of their life, yet the sad fact is that every day children die and parents are left grieving the loss of their child. This journey of grief is not an easy one. In fact, this is the most difficult path a parent will ever walk. The journey is long, lasting a lifetime. There’s no way to get off of this road. It is now the road that must be traveled every day for as long as a parent of child loss remains alive.

My life has been turned upside down and inside out by child loss and like so many others I was naïve enough to think it wouldn’t happen. Yet, it did. My son was snatched away without warning and now there are only memories to fill the huge hole that has been left in the center of my heart and soul. Child loss is such a misunderstood loss by the majority of people. Truthfully, I’m a bit tired of saying, “Unless you’ve walked in these shoes, you’ll never know what it feels like.” While that’s true, others can at least get a good grasp on what this void feels like if they really sit down and try to imagine what one day would be without the life of their own child.

I wish others understood the magnitude of this loss. I wish they understood that losing a child causes permanent changes to the very core of a parent. I wish they understood that you can have a rock solid faith and still cry yourself to sleep every night because the hole in your heart hurts so bad.

Oh, how much I wish others could grasp what it means to know with absolute certainty that your child will never appear on this earth again. Never again will we, the parents of child loss, get to see or touch our child again. We will never see life in our child’s eyes again. We will never be able to share any laughter with our child. We will never………….do anything with our child ever again.

Our child is now a memory living within our heart and our fear is that the memory of our child will fade over time.

One of the most difficult moments I had was seeing my son shortly before he was buried. I know that this is the tradition we have practiced in this country for years, but in a lot of ways it is brutally cruel.

I wanted “one last time” with my son, yet there were people standing around. Why can’t people understand that a mother needs one final moment all alone with her child?

I wish I would have screamed, “Get out. This is MY son. I gave birth to him, and I want to be the very last person to see him now that he’s gone!” , but I was polite instead. Oh, how much I wish I had tossed aside my manners and climbed up close to Mike and cried for hours and hours while holding him “one last time.”

"I wish others understood not to ever rush a mother at the funeral home. The clock means nothing to a mother anymore. She simply wants “one last time” with her child.

I ran my fingers across his face, his lips, his hair. My son. My beautiful son. There was so much left that I wanted to tell him. I wanted it to be just me and him. A mother and her son.

My tears drenched the shirt he was wearing as he laid so stoically in the casket. I wanted to yell out in fear and anger, “Why did you do this? Why did you leave like this? Didn’t you know I wanted to be with you when you died? I’m your mother! I wanted to be the one with you, not the EMT’s — strangers pounding on your heart trying to get your heart to beat one more time.”

I want others to know that I wanted to be the one to say, “He’s gone.”

I’m Mike’s mother. I want others to know that I wanted to be the one with him when he left this earth.

I want others to know that mothers have different feelings about child loss than anyone else. We carried our child’s body inside of us. We gave life to our child. We felt the miracle of life happening in every cell within us. We lived and breathed with our child for nine months. Our body sheltered our child, fed our child, nurtured our child.

I want the world to know that when a child dies, part of a mother dies, too, and that part that died cannot be revived ever again. Oh, she can fake it, but a mother knows that part of her died the very moment her child died. That’s what I’d like others to know.

I wish others knew how important it is to have our child remembered. I’m finding one of my biggest fears is Mike being forgotten. I’m so afraid his memory will fade each year until I’m the only one who remembers.

I’m so afraid my son’s life no longer counts……………

I want others to know that even though life goes on, it will never go on the same for a mother of child loss. Mike is forever forty-two. He will never grow older, and that saddens me so much. I found some emails Mike had sent to me shortly before his death. He was planning a way to move his family “back home.” He wanted me to keep it a secret until he could get the details worked out. He knew he could sell his three children on the idea, but he was going to have a harder time convincing his wife to move from Tennessee to Pennsylvania.

I want others to know that my son had plans but he didn’t get to see them carried out. His life ended far too soon.

Life is going on all about us, and every parent of child loss realizes that. But, we want YOU to realize that life isn’t going on for us as easily. Every day without our child is a struggle. Living with part of yourself gone isn’t easy. We fight hard every day to find a reason to smile about the future and most days it’s so very difficult.

I want others to know that the pain of child loss never goes away.

The. Pain. Never. Goes. Away."

A recent post on a blog by Clara Hinton, a fellow loss-mom.

Never the Same

"So many friends misunderstand the grief of losing a child. One of the first questions they want answered is, "When are you going to get over this? When will you be back to your old self?" Sadly, the answer is never. We'll never get over the death of our child, nor will we ever be our "old self" again. Why? Because when our child died, a part of us went with our child. It's impossible to explain to others. It's something a parent understands, though. We never feel "whole" following the loss of a child because such a big part of our heart is now missing. We will grieve the loss of our child all the days of our life. Grieving is an extension of the love we have for our child. It's not something to try to hide or be ashamed of. Grief is part of our lives now. We eventually learn to live within our grief, but we will never, ever be the same person again."

Silent Grief - Clara Hinton

Why Can't People Understand My Need to Grieve?

**This was borrowed from a blog I follow so, not my own words, but they could be as they so accurately put into words what we are feeling.....the feeling that since we are Christians, we should automatically be "all better. This couldn't be further from the truth.**

My son died. He died suddenly, without warning. On that warm day in May, the lives of so many people changed when my son’s life on this earth ended. He was the strong one in the family. He was the oldest brother and the one that the others looked up to always. He’s gone and our hearts are broken and life will never be the same again!

It is now going on two years since Mike died. Life has gone on for most everyone except his immediate family. For us, the pain is real. The pain is cruel. The longing for Mike overshadows every day in a million different ways. Our lives changed permanently when Mike died, and yet………..

I’m finding it so hard to grieve openly without others pointing a finger and letting me know that I should be stronger than this.

“Stronger than what?,” I want to scream over and over again! “How strong should I be? You walk in these shoes a day and tell me how strong I should be!”

I don’t understand. I really don’t. I don’t ever remember myself criticizing another for mourning the loss of a child. In fact, I often wondered how they were able to function.

I think part of the problem with my open grieving is others are so used to me being the strong one, that they want to snatch away my right to grieve! They selfishly want me to be strong for them!

Some days I feel like wearing a banner across me that says, “Every mother has the right to grieve her child. Every mother needs to grieve the loss of her child because that is her last way of showing her love for her child.”

There is a place in my heart that feels like there is an open wound. It hurts. Some nights when I’m getting into bed I sit on the edge of the bed and let out several long, deep mournful sighs. Oh, how much it hurts deep within to know that my son died and is never coming back to this earth! I will feel that open wound inside of me until the very day I die. Why? Because I am a mother who nurtured this child inside of me before he was ever born. I held him close to me for months after he was born feeding him, rocking him and singing him lullabies. I wiped his nose and gently rubbed his back through many feverish nights.

I was there to calm him when he had nightmares. I was there to cheer him on when he was struggling and felt self-defeat. I washed his clothes and cooked thousands upon thousands of meals for him and did it because I loved him. I watched him grow into a fine, young man.

Then he died, and my heart broke. And, now people expect me to be strong and not show my grief.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not constantly sobbing. I don’t always have a tissue held to my nose. My eyes aren’t swollen shut every day from crying. I go to work every day. I enjoy family and friends. I love cooking and gardening.

But, I am also walking around with an open wound in my heart that painfully hurts day and night, and when I do cry or express my sorrow I expect to be respected and given the support I need to grieve in my own way.

What a shame that parents of child loss often feel like they must put on a happy face and mask their grief! How wrong it is to ask a parent who has had a child die to “Buckle up. Be strong. Put that behind you and move on!” I don’t expect people who have never felt this pain to fully understand. That’s an impossibility. But, I do expect to be given supportive freedom to grieve as my final way of expressing my love for my son. Grief is the longest good-bye a parent will ever say. If only others could understand how important this final good-bye is to a parent!