I guess that I am on a theme here ...
Grief.
I mentioned in my previous post that I had a friend who desperately wanted me to help answer the question of 'how do you go on living' after losing a child. And I could not answer her question.
I was thinking about this as I walked from one room to another in my quiet house today and it hit me: I KNOW THE ANSWER!!!
I did not come up with it, nor am I any part of it. I found it linked to a blog that I was sneaking on. My nieces husbands brother and his wife (got that?) lost their little 18 month old daughter in a drowning and they have a blog about it. I do not know them, but my niece had a link to their website and I was going through it. I remembered when it happened and all of my nieces from their area knew them were devastated. In the section where they kept a daily update of how there daughter was doing, her death and the aftermath, she links to this post. I clicked on it one night and decided that it was the most wonderful explanation of how parents who have lost a child deal with their grief.
I am going to just copy it verbatim - it follows:
STEVEN KALAS:
When you lose a child, grieving is a lifelong experience
When our first child is born, a loud voice says, "Runners, take your marks!" We hear the starting gun and the race begins. It's a race we must win at all cost. We have to win. The competition is called "I'll race you to the grave." I'm currently racing three sons. I really want to win.
Not everyone wins.
I'm here at the national meeting of Compassionate Friends, an organization offering support and resources for parents who lose the race. I'm wandering the halls during the "break-out" sessions. In this room are parents whose children died in car accidents. Over there is a room full of parents of murdered children. Parents of cancer victims are at the end of the hall. Miscarriages and stillbirths are grouped together, as are parents who have survived a child's suicide. And so it goes.
In a few minutes, I'm going to address Compassionate Friends. This is the toughest audience of my life. I mix with the gathering crowd, and a woman from Delaware glances at my name tag. Her name tag has a photo of her deceased son. My name tag is absent photos.
"So ... you haven't ... lost anyone," she says cautiously.
"My three sons are yet alive, if that's what you're asking me," I say gently.
She tries to nod politely, but I can see that I've lost credibility in her eyes. She's wondering who invited this speaker, and what on earth he could ever have to say to her.
My address is titled "The Myth of Getting Over It." It's my attempt to answer the driving questions of grieving parents: When will I get over this? How do I get over this?
You don't get over it. Getting over it is an inappropriate goal. An unreasonable hope. The loss of a child changes you. It changes your marriage. It changes the way birds sing. It changes the way the sun rises and sets. You are forever different.
You don't want to get over it. Don't act surprised. As awful a burden as grief is, you know intuitively that it matters, that it is profoundly important to be grieving. Your grief plays a crucial part in staying connected to your child's life. To give up your grief would mean losing your child yet again. If I had the power to take your grief away, you'd fight me to keep it. Your grief is awful, but it is also holy. And somewhere inside you, you know that.
The goal is not to get over it. The goal is to get on with it.
Profound grief is like being in a stage play wherein suddenly the stagehands push a huge grand piano into the middle of the set. The piano paralyzes the play. It dominates the stage. No matter where you move, it impedes your sight lines, your blocking, your ability to interact with the other players. You keep banging into it, surprised each time that it's still there. It takes all your concentration to work around it, this at a time when you have little ability or desire to concentrate on anything.
The piano changes everything. The entire play must be rewritten around it.
But over time the piano is pushed to stage left. Then to upper stage left. You are the playwright, and slowly, surely, you begin to find the impetus and wherewithal to stop reacting to the intrusive piano. Instead, you engage it. Instead of writing every scene around the piano, you begin to write the piano into each scene, into the story of your life.
You learn to play that piano. You're surprised to find that you want to play, that it's meaningful, even peaceful to play it. At first your songs are filled with pain, bitterness, even despair. But later you find your songs contain beauty, peace, a greater capacity for love and compassion. You and grief -- together -- begin to compose hope. Who'da thought?
Your grief becomes an intimate treasure, though the spaces between the grief lengthen. You no longer need to play the piano every day, or even every month. But later, when you're 84, staring out your kitchen window on a random Tuesday morning, you welcome the sigh, the tears, the wistful pain that moves through your heart and reminds you that your child's life mattered.
You wipe the dust off the piano and sit down to play.
Grief.
I mentioned in my previous post that I had a friend who desperately wanted me to help answer the question of 'how do you go on living' after losing a child. And I could not answer her question.
I was thinking about this as I walked from one room to another in my quiet house today and it hit me: I KNOW THE ANSWER!!!
I did not come up with it, nor am I any part of it. I found it linked to a blog that I was sneaking on. My nieces husbands brother and his wife (got that?) lost their little 18 month old daughter in a drowning and they have a blog about it. I do not know them, but my niece had a link to their website and I was going through it. I remembered when it happened and all of my nieces from their area knew them were devastated. In the section where they kept a daily update of how there daughter was doing, her death and the aftermath, she links to this post. I clicked on it one night and decided that it was the most wonderful explanation of how parents who have lost a child deal with their grief.
I am going to just copy it verbatim - it follows:
STEVEN KALAS:
When you lose a child, grieving is a lifelong experience
When our first child is born, a loud voice says, "Runners, take your marks!" We hear the starting gun and the race begins. It's a race we must win at all cost. We have to win. The competition is called "I'll race you to the grave." I'm currently racing three sons. I really want to win.
Not everyone wins.
I'm here at the national meeting of Compassionate Friends, an organization offering support and resources for parents who lose the race. I'm wandering the halls during the "break-out" sessions. In this room are parents whose children died in car accidents. Over there is a room full of parents of murdered children. Parents of cancer victims are at the end of the hall. Miscarriages and stillbirths are grouped together, as are parents who have survived a child's suicide. And so it goes.
In a few minutes, I'm going to address Compassionate Friends. This is the toughest audience of my life. I mix with the gathering crowd, and a woman from Delaware glances at my name tag. Her name tag has a photo of her deceased son. My name tag is absent photos.
"So ... you haven't ... lost anyone," she says cautiously.
"My three sons are yet alive, if that's what you're asking me," I say gently.
She tries to nod politely, but I can see that I've lost credibility in her eyes. She's wondering who invited this speaker, and what on earth he could ever have to say to her.
My address is titled "The Myth of Getting Over It." It's my attempt to answer the driving questions of grieving parents: When will I get over this? How do I get over this?
You don't get over it. Getting over it is an inappropriate goal. An unreasonable hope. The loss of a child changes you. It changes your marriage. It changes the way birds sing. It changes the way the sun rises and sets. You are forever different.
You don't want to get over it. Don't act surprised. As awful a burden as grief is, you know intuitively that it matters, that it is profoundly important to be grieving. Your grief plays a crucial part in staying connected to your child's life. To give up your grief would mean losing your child yet again. If I had the power to take your grief away, you'd fight me to keep it. Your grief is awful, but it is also holy. And somewhere inside you, you know that.
The goal is not to get over it. The goal is to get on with it.
Profound grief is like being in a stage play wherein suddenly the stagehands push a huge grand piano into the middle of the set. The piano paralyzes the play. It dominates the stage. No matter where you move, it impedes your sight lines, your blocking, your ability to interact with the other players. You keep banging into it, surprised each time that it's still there. It takes all your concentration to work around it, this at a time when you have little ability or desire to concentrate on anything.
The piano changes everything. The entire play must be rewritten around it.
But over time the piano is pushed to stage left. Then to upper stage left. You are the playwright, and slowly, surely, you begin to find the impetus and wherewithal to stop reacting to the intrusive piano. Instead, you engage it. Instead of writing every scene around the piano, you begin to write the piano into each scene, into the story of your life.
You learn to play that piano. You're surprised to find that you want to play, that it's meaningful, even peaceful to play it. At first your songs are filled with pain, bitterness, even despair. But later you find your songs contain beauty, peace, a greater capacity for love and compassion. You and grief -- together -- begin to compose hope. Who'da thought?
Your grief becomes an intimate treasure, though the spaces between the grief lengthen. You no longer need to play the piano every day, or even every month. But later, when you're 84, staring out your kitchen window on a random Tuesday morning, you welcome the sigh, the tears, the wistful pain that moves through your heart and reminds you that your child's life mattered.
You wipe the dust off the piano and sit down to play.
3 comments:
Amen. Beautifully expressed.
~Carla
Wow. That is so deep. Thanks.
I enjoy your blog. I have lost one child in infancy in an accident in our home, and last year helped another child through a serious year of cancer. He is still here, but I'm prepared for whatever. I remember thinking when Annie passed away, "I don't ever want to do this again." Then, when Eric became ill last year, I said, "I can do this. I don't want to, but I can do it." Miraculously he has been in remission for 3 months. We are prepared for whatever comes, even though we don't want to be.
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