Category: Shared Grief (Page 19 of 23)

It’s OK To Be Broken

April 25, 2021 / Mama Fish

A girlfriend reminded me of something I told her. I said, “I am broken. I will always be broken. And I am trying to learn how to live broken.” She brought it up in the context of us moving away from Zane’s childhood home and that this would be a good thing for me. She said, “It’s time for you to heal, to move on”.

We have all received the comments, “it’s time to move on” or “she wouldn’t want you to be sad” or my favorite, “I need you to be the same person you were before”-there’s a concept!

Although painful, I realize these types of comments come from the heart. Friends and family care and they don’t want to see me hurting. They too miss Zane. And they miss who I was before he was killed. None of us like change and death is the biggest change of them all.

What they don’t realize is that you can’t fix this. Death has put us into a state of grief for the remainder of our days. Some days will be better than others. Some days will bring laughter and joy…I look forward to that. Some days, actually a portion of every day, I am not ok. Something comes along and reminds me I am broken. Something shows up to remind me I am not, and cannot, be the same person I was.

The simple fact is we are broken. We can’t get over it or get past it. We are broken. What we do with our brokenness is what is important. How we bring daily practices and new ways of being into our lives is what will help soften our grief. But remove it? Put it behind us? That is not possible. Grief will always be a part of our new make-up. It is the other side of love and we have loved deep, therefore we will grieve deep.

And that’s ok. Grief is hard work and part of the work is accepting our brokenness. If you try to hide or fight it or ignore it, it will hit you harder and in many ways. By accepting it, I can face it and then I am able to explore ways that it will fit into my life such that I am not a blubbery angry mess every hour.

When something is broken and you glue the pieces back together, it is not the same as the original beautiful piece. With care and love and time, it can take a different, but still beautiful shape. Friends and family need to give us patience, and a lot of it, as we redefine ourselves to accommodate our grief and develop into a person that carries brokenness with individual style and grace.

Things We Leave Behind

April 18, 2021 / Mama Fish

As the process of moving continues, my heart becomes heavier. The work seems endless, a purging of decades of items purchased or given that has filled three levels to the ceiling. Only a third can come with me. And that might be too much. And with each long day done, I crawl into bed hoping that what I have had to leave behind will not come back to haunt me. This is especially true with Zane’s things.

Clearing out his room was by far the hardest room to do. I would only be able to tolerate a short time, a few things to sort before the memories of these belongings and what they meant to him would bring me to my knees in tears. With that, I would close the door to his room and come back another time.

In the end, I have a box of games and books and leisure items that I will share with his friends. I have packed all his clothes and will decide another time what the fate of each piece will be. Some will be shared, some will be made into pillows or a quilt or maybe another bear. (My memory bear, made out of one of his favorite hoodies, is a treasured piece that sits on my bed). I threw out or donated his toys he kept from his childhood; well, a box of favorites is coming with me. I am taking his desk and his bed, hoping it will fit in my tiny new abode. We packed his collection of wines to enjoy with family and friends on special occasions. His room is now ‘staged’ to sell. He would be pleased how tidy it is.

His bathroom was even harder than his bedroom. I left that to last. Opening his drawer to find his toothbrush and hair brush, waiting there for him to wake up and use them. His box of contact lenses; he had just renewed his prescription. His cologne and deodorant; I closed my eyes, sprayed it into the air to smell how he would smell after a shower. His daily routine in this bathroom; I can hear him singing in the shower. I can see him rubbing the hair crème between his hands and placing it perfectly to shape his hair. He spent more time on his hair than I did on mine! None of his personal hygiene items will be taken with me. There is a sad finality around this. Packing up his stuff drives home the fact that he will not be stopping by to pick them up. I will not be helping move them over to his new place. This is it. And that takes a lot of energy.

The hardest thing I will be leaving behind is the imprinted energy of my son growing up and living in this home. I wish I could bottle the energy to open and breathe in his smell, to see his clothes on the floor or the school work scattered on his desk. I wish I could bottle the sound of his laughter as he beat the latest video game. The emotions and the memories of my son’s life in this home now must reside in my heart.

Perhaps that is why the whole in our heart is so vast; there is a lifetime of photographic moments that fill it.

Choosing the Final Resting Spot

April 11, 2021 / Mama Fish

When my father was dying, we discussed where his final resting place might be. We agreed it would be with me. He wanted nothing fancy. “Put me in a cardboard box and as long as you want me, I will know that I am traveling with you and Jon”. That was 25 years ago and he is still travelling with us.

Choosing your child’s final resting spot is a whole other level. It is something we should not have to think about, but for the community I live in, it is an ugly reality. This past weekend, our friends invited us to be a part of placing their son in his ‘final resting spot’. It was an experience I was not ready for.

Every detail they agonized over. Choices of what to place in the tomb with his urn were made. His father wore his son’s clothes and took his baseball cap off to place with the other beloved items. My husband spoke, welcoming their friends and together we shared our love for their son and their grief.

It was much like a memorial until it was time to seal the tomb. I had no idea it would affect me in the way that it did. Watching the men lining the top with a heavy bond and then placing the lid to seal the urn and his personal belongings into a place for eternity was heart wrenching. I thought of our sons’ urn at home. I thought of my father’s urn. I can hold or speak to their urn at any time; I can move them from room to room. They are mobile. The thought of having their urns anywhere but with me, seems incomprehensible. And although I truly respect their decision, a final resting spot is not something I had thought about until that afternoon; witnessing the urn placed in a beautiful memorial marble tomb that we will not be able to hold or touch again. It was final, too final for me.

Each of us has our reasons for what we do. Our choices are made to assist us with what we need to mourn. Each of us is different, yet with a lot of similarities. We want to honor our child, protect our child, and do right by our child, even after death.

Our friends ensured each detail was about their son. His final resting place is near a pond where he might want to have fished. He is positioned to be ‘looking’ west, towards home. And it has a beautiful bench to sit on. As difficult as it was for them to place their son in a final resting spot, they feel it will bring some peace to know that he is forever safe in a place where all his friends and family can visit. Which we will do.

Plan for no More

April 4, 2021 / Mama Fish

There is something about knowing it is your last time. As we continue to prep to sell our home, I realized that this Easter will be our last one here. Suddenly it becomes very nostalgic. Each thought around what to serve, how the table will look, what could we do extra consumes my thoughts. And memories of Easters past come back to visit me.

We had years of egg hunts in this home, always ending up in the laundry room where the ‘big prize’ was hidden in the laundry chute. Friends and family would gather around our table, living out Zane’s definition of happiness; good food, good drink and good company. We have been blessed.

I have kept our Easter traditions since the crash but with new twists. I make Easter bags to share with friends and family which now include a tube of bubbles to honor Zane. My daughter and I still dye eggs, with one, a bright blue for Zane. This ‘last time’ melancholy encourages me to look at this holiday and ask myself, what do I want this Easter to be? The last Easter in my children’s home.

We often say, “Oh, if only I had known it was the last time. If only I had one more time.” Why don’t we treat each celebration, even each day, like it might be our last? In the daily hustle, it is hard to slow down enough to think it might be the last time. We believe there will be more, many more, or at least one more. But we have learned in the most tragic of ways and now we know better, there is never a guarantee for ‘One more’.

I encourage you this year, as holidays and special occasions arrive to treat them like the last time. Slow down to think about past times and traditions built around each one. Consider ways to do things different or new or what might you always want the same. With each holiday, think of ways you can honor and include our children who are celebrating with us from a different realm. Acknowledging that each celebration may just be the last time does not have to be depressing. In fact, it can be the fuel to invite gratitude into our lives. And that is good mourning.

Grief Has Hit Home

March 28, 2021 / Mama Fish

We had always wanted to downsize after the kids grew up and moved out. This becomes complicated when your child passes and moving becomes leaving the physical space of a lifetime of memories together. Our new place will not have Zane sit there and share a drink with us. It will not have his fingerprints on the door or his voice fill the room with new things to remember. Leaving this home feels like my son is leaving all over again.

I thought maybe I could remedy this by bringing all of his things with me. The problem with downsizing is that you no longer have the space for everything. Tough decisions will need to be made as to what stays and what goes. It takes the joy of moving to a bittersweet level. Ironically fitting with everything else; life is bittersweet, including our move.

The suggestions have been to take pictures, give some of his things to friends, sell his stuff and use the money to buy something he would have liked. These are helpful ideas. I might even try all of them. However, none of them brings his room, all his belongings with me. None of these suggestions help me accept that his imprinted energy of living in this home for seventeen years will remain here. Away from me.

I know that his spirit is everywhere. I know that he will know where I am and I expect more visits. None of the aspects of communicating with my son on his new realm will change after the move. That is not what I am grieving. I am grieving that the last home my son lived in, grew up in, will be gone.

What will happen to the tree he planted in grade three? Will the new owners cut it down? What happens to his bike that I look out each morning to see by the fence…remembering how much he enjoyed that as a boy. The view through the front window where he would pull up in his beloved car…I still look out that window, waiting for him to arrive. The piano he learned to play, the couch he played video games on, and the video games….our current home is still staged for his return. The new home will have none of this. It simply cannot. These changes are kryptonite to me.

Someone suggested this move might help with my healing. I can’t imagine how, but I hope so. Right now, with each step to prepare for our house to sell and to move away causes my heart to scream. Grief has hit home in every definition.

The Arrival of How

March 14, 2021 / Mama Fish

I gave birth to two children. I am ‘mama fish’ to many more. Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, that my own children have brought home and I have adopted like rescue puppies. Our home was filled with a variety of personalities that sat at our kitchen island. I would feed them, listen to their dreams, their drama, and their hopes. I keep in touch with them to this day. They have all grown into beautiful young adults experiencing life in ways unique to them and I relish in their shared stories.

This week, as I was shopping at Safeway, my daughter called me in hysterics. She asked if I was sitting down. No, I was pushing my cart of food, mask on, in a hurry to finish. She blurted out that one of these boys, one she had dated and stayed in touch with as friends, was found dead.

The floor came up to meet me. I gasped. I moved my cart to an aisle where no one was in so I could take off my mask. “What the hell?” I asked…I needed to rehear it. How does this happen? How can this loving child be gone? How did this happen to someone so young? How did we not know? How…

I think that how is where grief is born. It is the word that we utter as the pain and confusion of this reality arrives and the need to understand becomes a basic priority. It is what our brain needs to know to face what is happening. We want this word answered as if in some way, answering it could change things. The answer might bring hope and a clue to fix this. And yet, when a child dies, the how…every how to this question brings only one truth. Your child is dead.

Our heart is more complicated and less accepting. It doesn’t care of the how. It asks why. And it is the answer to this question that seals our fate as a grief warrior. The answer to the why is a never-ending question we keep reliving because we know how but we will never be able to understand why.

When You Lose a Child You Have Not Met

March 7, 2021 / Mama Fish

The unbreakable bond of motherhood begins when we are told we are pregnant. In my second trimester, I had some unusual spotting and was sent for an ultrasound. This was my first pregnancy and I was a ‘high-risk’. I asked the technician if everything was ok. She said nothing. She asked me to go to the change room and wait. I sat there, wearing the blue paper gown, hand on my tummy, waiting to hear the fate of my child. I had never experienced fear as deep or hope as high as in that moment.

She tapped on the wall next to my curtain and called my name. I poked my head out. She smiled and said; “Your baby is fine”. I sat back on the bench. Relief filled me and suddenly I was crying. The assurance that my child was ok, that this little life growing inside me was still here.

I share this experience because the memory of that day came flooding back when I received the news that my nephew’s fiancé had a miscarriage. I didn’t even know they were pregnant. They had invited us over to which their plan was to share the happy news. Instead of an announcement of joy, we received a call that the unthinkable happened and they needed a little time alone. They are grieving.

I am at a loss. I learned of both the pregnancy and the death in the same call. I want to run over but they have shut the doors and unplugged in their deep agony. Their choice is such a different way of grieving than the one we made where dozens of friends and family came through our doors when Zane was killed.

Yes, everyone grieves different. And yes, you will not know how you will grieve until you are there. I naturally thought, as every parent would, that I would die right on the spot. Instead, we were welcoming Zane’s friends into our home with open arms. My husband sat next to these friends, asking for stories and soaking in the memories they shared. And we could do this because we had 26 years of experiences with our son. My nephew had only months of knowing that he was to be a father and dreaming of what that would be like.

Now, they will begin to hear all the usual things one says about such a loss; you are young, you can have another child, it wasn’t meant to be, and you will get past this. Because what else do you say to a couple whose lost a baby they hadn’t met? The truth is whatever their future will contain, that life, that baby, is no longer an earthly little bundle of joy but rather a spirit of energy they cannot dress or hold.

A loss is a loss. Regardless of the age of your child, this type of loss is catastrophic. It sends you to live in a world where all the hopes and dreams and expectations are gone for that child and for your life as it would have been with that child. I ache for them; for being so very young in their journey to have to experience this type of pain.

So, I did what we do when we don’t know what else to do. I made soup and muffins that I will drop off at their door. I will wait until they are ready to be hugged. And in the meantime, I will share their pain from a distance.

Our First Conversation across the Realms

February 28, 2021 / Mama Fish

A colleague asked if I remembered what I was thinking the first day we received the news of Zane’s passing. Everyone is different. For me, it was vague. I remember just snippets of that day. I went back to the letters I wrote to Zane after the crash and found this one.

Dear Zane,

The day of the crash I kept repeating, quietly but out loud, three things. “It’s ok, I know and, yes”.

Why these? In my deep and earth shattering shock of the unbearable news given to me, why would I quietly, calmly repeat these words over and over?

Was I talking to you? You were here, even then, to let me know? Does that make sense? And what were you saying to me that had these answers?

I always say “it’s ok” to those in pain or dealing with change of no choice. Was I telling you it’s ok? That I know you are still here. I know you are ok. I know that you are moving on to where you are supposed to be. Yes, it’s ok that this is the plan?

No. I do not feel that way. Now. But I wonder, in that day that cut open, raw day, if I did know better? If some how you were there to say, this is what happened. And I said, “It’s ok”. And you said, “I’m off to the next realm” and I said, “I know” and you said “ok?” and I said, “yes”.

And perhaps in my sheer grief that conversation happened but my brain can’t remember the details. It was a conversation our souls had. And it’s why I was so calm, so quiet, so (temporarily) absent from pain. Or maybe so deep in pain. Either way, I know it was a conversation we were having. An understanding that you gave me, to which, in my present pain, I must find and hang on to.

Over the last year, I am learning that I can still have a relationship with my son if I meet him halfway. Zane believed we are energy, souls having a human experience. He would talk about how souls vibrate at a much higher level than humans; of how the mind uses such a small capacity of its’ potential. This belief has inspired me to place hope in the practice of raising my vibration level to receive more.

At first this sounded too sci-fi trippy for me but what do I have to lose? I mean, how happy are we when we dream of our children or see a sign that we believe they sent? Why wouldn’t you want to have more of those, daily dosages of connection. Albeit, a physical hug is what we will always wish for, since fate stole that from us, what could other possible ways to unite with our child be?

I believe that my words uttered repeatedly that day, hours after we were told he was killed, was a conversation I did indeed have with my son. It was the first of many to come.

We Speak From Our Place of Experience

February 21, 2021 / Mama Fish

My husband and I attended a social gathering very soon after Zane’s crash. The hostess introduced us to a woman who had lost her son a year before. The woman said to me, “Wait until you discover the blessings of this”. I was incensed. What the hell did she mean? How could there possibly be blessings of this loss, of the pain I knew I would forever feel.

She was ahead of me in her grief journey. She had a year of the shock weaning and her strength building that she could see the signs her son brought her. I had no idea. Until I too, received signs and yes, they are blessings.

Very recently, a friend lost her husband to cancer and I heard myself say, “Embrace the pain”. After, I realized how cruel this might have sounded to her. She is probably nowhere near a point of wanting to embrace anything but her husband. And what I meant was about something that I am learning to do 2 years into my journey. She is just starting hers. And with this I realized; we speak from our place of experience.

When we offer condolences or a supportive word we can only draw from what has happened in our own lives. And we typically speak in the present tense, how we are feeling or coping now. This may be why some comments seem inconsiderate. Would I have said that to my friend if we experienced loss at the same time? No. Because I would not have the experience I now have. Could I have remembered what I needed or wanted to hear 2 years ago? If I had, my words would have been totally different. It also might have been more helpful for her.

Moving forward, I am going to try hard to remember to think of where on the journey a person is at before I share a comment that might come across harsh. I may add a preface to my comment such as “from where I am at now” or “in my experience.” Or maybe I just listen.

And how can we minimize the sting of receiving insensitive comments? We can remember that the person is not trying to be malicious; they are trying to show empathy. We can remember they are hurting for us. We can remember they want to lend support. And, we can remember their place of experience (time and type) is where they are speaking from. It is the only place we know of.

Sweetening Sorrow

February 14, 2021 / Mama Fish

When Zane was a toddler, as most parents do, I would bribe him. “If you are good while we shop for groceries we can go to Bernard Callebaut after,” I would say as we entered the store. He was always good. He couldn’t wait for the milk chocolate sucker in the shape of a bear. Flash forward to Easter and his Aunt sends the Zeller’s chocolate rabbit special. Zane took one bite off the ear and spit it out. “What ‘dis?”; he said with disgust. It was then that I realized what I had done. I had instilled a taste of expensive chocolate in my 2 year old. There was no going back.

The holidays, Valentine’s included, are rough for grief warriors. It takes energy, sometimes more than we have, to face the empty day, the missing part of our past traditions that can’t be the same now. Valentine’s is the first of these after the New Year to face. And when I remember this, it gives me some understanding as to why we are all a bit edgy and short tempered lately. It’s the anticipation of another upcoming holiday without my boy.

I need to change this. I ‘host’ holidays but without the excitement and interest I used to have. I know Zane would want me to celebrate and enjoy special occasions. He used to kid me about decorating the house and sending cards for every type of holiday. “Just another reason for my mom to party,” he would explain to his friends. And he was right. We are, or were, a social house. And maybe we still are…just not as loud, or not as easy as before.

So, how do we bring back joy to things we used to love doing? I believe we have to incorporate things our loved ones cared for. What brought your child joy on Valentine’s Day? Was it a trip to the local chocolate shop? Was it decorating cards to hand out to friends? Was it baking cookies to dip in caramel sauce? What if we could push past the pain, and instead of not doing these things without our child, we continue to do them in honor of our child?

We know that when we share stories and things that our child loved, we feel better in that moment. They will always be a part of our lives so why push the traditions they loved into past tense? Why not include what they liked in our present celebrations. This could be good mourning.

I am going to buy some really good chocolate to share. I’m going to open a bottle of his favorite red and order the heart shaped pizza. And maybe, with attitude and practice, the joy Zane would want for me will come.