September * October 2002 Tread Gently Joan Splettstoesser TCF, Monte Vista Colorado September Song I wonder how many people think about what it’s like for a parent not to have to pack a Snoopy lunch pail for their child ever again. September marks the re-entry of kids into the world of academics...but for some parents it’s the reminder that the excitement of the children that electrifies the air won’t be the same in their house this year. So many hopes and dreams … and memories are wrapped up in what occupies a major part of a child’s life … school time. Summer cushions us from having to be painfully aware that our child won’t be walking to school with the other kids, or won’t be trying out for the lead part in the school play, or won’t need new school clothes, or won’t fall in love with the girl who sites behind him in math class. Parents who never had the pleasure of “letting them go” to school for the first time know what they missed. They remember their own “first time” and would like to have relived it with their child. They would have liked to have made it really special and asked all the questions that their own parents asked them when they arrived home from school. Hopes and dreams for this child’s future will never be realized. “I wonder if my neighbor remembers that if my baby had lived this is the year he would have started kindergarten. I wanted him to have a Snoopy lunch box just like the other kids.” TCF/ Pikes Peaks Chapter Newsletter, September 1990 Grief is a great teacher When it sends us back to serve and bless the living. We learn how to counsel and comfort those who Like ourselves are bowed with sorrow We learn when to keep silence in their presence, And when a work will assure them of our love and concern Gate of Prayer Judaism Prayer Book The Gap Our daughter, Alexis, died 6 months ago, at the age of 9. A rare medical anomaly, in a heart-rending wrench of our innermost spirit, stole her from us in barely more than a moment. Recently, I was at the beach near our home with what remains of my soul - my son, Ethan. Our new puppy romped with us. Beautiful weather, fresh salt air, gentle clear water and sea lions barking in the distance. Perfect. Walking back, I saw a sharp, rusted metal rod and thought to get it out of the way. As I tossed it aside, it caught my thumb and cut me. Perfect. Every moment of peace we have, cuts. Everything that is, hones what is not. The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one, whose children are well and intact, can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children have absorbed, what they bear. Our daughter now comes to us through every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal, every kid on a scooter. We seek contact with her atoms - her hairbrush, her toothbrush, her clothing. We reach for what was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded. What we had wanted, when she so suddenly took ill, was for her to be treated. We wanted her to be annoyed that her head had been shaved for surgery. We would have shaved ours and then watched her smile as we recovered together, whatever the nature of that recovery. Recover is no longer a part of our vocabulary. Now we simply walk through the noise and debris of our personal ground zero. A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed, it often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter there is to be cut deeply, and torn anew, each time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where she now resides. This will be so for years to come and it will change us, profoundly. At some point in the distant future, the edges of that hole will have tempered and softened but the empty space will remain - a life sentence. It is not unlike a dog who, suddenly hit by a car, survives. The impact is devastating and leaves the animal in shock, confusion and despair. In time the animal recovers adequately to spend the remainder of its life on three legs. It is not that he is unable, eventually, to function or even to laugh and play. The reality, however, is that, on three legs from here on, every step he takes, every action, virtually every breath reminds him of what he has lost. We are that animal. Our community of friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve for our daughter, in part, through talking about her and our feelings for having lost her. Some go there with us, others cannot and, through their denial add a further measure, however unwitting, to an already heavy burden. This was not a sprained ankle or major surgery that we suffered. Assuming that we may be feeling “better” 6 months later is simply “to not get it”. The excruciating and isolating reality that bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it is a trap - those whose compassion and insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And, yet, somehow, there are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us and stay, to our immeasurable comfort. They have understood, again each in their own way, that Alexis remains our daughter through our memory of her. Her memory is sustained through speaking about her and our feelings about her death. Deny this and you deny her life. Deny her life and you have no place in ours. That’s the equation. How different people have responded to our loss, or not, transcends a range of attitudes and personal histories. It is teaching us much about human capacity and experience, albeit at a searing price. Parents’ memories of a lost child sustain that life. It should be the other way around. We recognize that we have removed to an emotional place where it is often very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful and the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that accompanies us, sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it it’s own voice we fear we would become truly unreachable and so we remain “strong” for a host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings we would be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise. People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard. Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every experience - and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we will have actually managed to survive when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point nor who will still be with us. There will come a time, quite some number of years down the road, when the balance between the desperate awareness of what we have lost when our daughter died will be somewhat balanced by the warm and joyful memories of what we had with her when she lived. I neither long for nor cringe from that time. It will simply come. We will recognize it - though now it is far beyond us. So, yes, our beloved daughter is gone - a light in our lives gone out leaving blackness for us, left behind, to stumble through. And, while we understand and deeply feel the meaning of our phrase “Now we are lit by her only from within”, we hope, desperately, that she is wherever the light is. We are trying to understand what this means, as we seek our own way, for the remainder of our lives, to some kind of light. We love our son and are trying to breath. We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them. This is our attempt. For those, untarnished by such events, who wish to know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap. March, 2002 Globe and Mail Michael Crelinsten is Alexis’ and Ethan’s dad. TCF Victoria Chapter   Please Don’t Discount Sibling Grief I have come to think of sibling grief as “Discount Grief.” Why? Because siblings appear to be an emotional bargain in most people’s eyes. People worry so much about the bereaved parents that they invest very little attention in the grieving sibling. My personal “favorite” comforting line said to siblings is “you be sure and take care of your parents’. I wanted to know who was supposed to take care of me...I knew I couldn’t. The grief of a sibling may differ from that of a parent, but it ought not be discounted. People need to realize that while it is obviously painful for parents to have lost a child, it is also painful for the sibling, who has not only lost a sister or brother, but an irreplaceable friend. While dealing with this double loss, he or she must confront yet another factor: The loss of a brother or sister is frequently the surviving sibling’s first experience with the death of any young person. Young people feel they will live forever. A strong dose of mortality in the form of a sibling is very hard to take. The feelings of the siblings are also often discounted when decisions are being made....on things ranging from funeral plans to flower selections. Parents need to listen to surviving siblings who usually know a lot about the tastes and preferences of the deceased. Drawing on the knowledge that surviving siblings have about supposedly trivial things...such as favorite clothes or music...can serve two purposes when planning funeral or memorial services. First, their input helps ensure that the deceased receives the type of service he or she would have liked. Second, their inclusion in the planning lets them know they are still an important part of the family. I realize that people are unaware that they are discounting sibling grief. But then, that’s why I’m writing this...so people will know. Jane Machado TCF Tuland CA -Lovingly Lifted from Atlanta Chapter Sept. ‘95   The Angels Cry Raindrops fall from the Heavens mimicking the tears falling down my cheeks. A torrent of rain is unveiled from the dark clouds above like the shadow on my soul. The angels too cry for my loss. Thunder and lightning are unleashed in anguish. The skies drum out my torment until at long last I cannot cry anymore — today. The rain slowly tapers off to a gentle sprinkle as my grief is spent. The clouds part; the sun comes out once more and dries away my tears. A robin lands nearby singing gleefully, reminding us that with sorrow there is also joy. By Lorraine Bebeau for Ryan TCF, St. Albert July 1997   SMILES and TEARS IN SALT LAKE CITY Eight-hundred bereaved parents, grandparents, and siblings, some in their first year of grief, some twenty years along I their journey, each wearing a badge with the smiling face of a child. The map of the U.S. in the Hospitality room has clusters of pins all over it: Miami, New York, San Francisco, Boise, Albuquerque…...A thin strip above the 49th parallel contains only five pins: one stuck in Montreal, one in Winnipeg, one in Calgary, one in Victoria, and, yes, one in North Vancouver stuck in by Woldy and me. I forgot to bring a Canadian flag pin and only managed to meet up with one other Canadian, Andy, from Calgary, who attended the newsletter editor’s workshop with me. Since there were ninety workshops in the course of this three-day U.S. National Conference of TCF, I guess I was lucky to meet up with even one of the Canadian representatives. I met a number of special people during those very intense days—no one was passing their time in superficial conversation! A treat for me was meeting Robin Kingery, native of Salt Lake City and program coordinator for the conference. Robin and I had been corresponding by e-mail for months ever since I sent her my book (Holding On: Poems for Alex) and offered to give a Writing as Healing workshop. I realized how fortunate I was to be given the role of workshop leader when I met a number of other authors with their books in the well-stocked conference book room. There, and in my own workshop, I discovered that I am not unique in writing compulsively about my grief. I was thankful that my writing workshop was scheduled on the second day of the conference so that when my assigned room started to fill up (45 attended) I was at least familiar with a few faces I had seen at previous workshops. I was also aware that people at this conference were willing to talk, needed to talk. When I asked a question, a number of hands would be raised in response (quite unlike some first-year college classes I have taught). Robin had also arranged that I would facilitate an evening sharing session of poetry, so by the time I left the conference I was quite familiar with other like-minded grievers, those who believe in giving sorrow words through writing. In fact a number of us are still e-mailing poems to each other. On the facing page is the first one we received, from Bill Brown) TCF Albuquerque), who, instead of listing to my instructions, started writing his own poem before I even gave the imaging exercise! While I attended workshops on newsletter editing, “Using Meditation and Guided Imagery” and “What Makes A Chapter Tick,” Woldy attended “For Men Only,” “It’s Been a Long time, How Have I Changed?” and “Uses and Abuses of Religion.” We had a lot to talk about when we finally crashed in our luxury hotel room (The Grand American Hotel with chandeliers, polished brass, Italian marble and plush carpets would ordinarily have been out-of-our-league. We stayed there at the reduced conference price.) One day between workshops I lost Woldy. I found him standing in the hotel pool, trying to beat the 110 degree temperatures, gesturing in earnest conversation with another bereaved father, also waist-deep. I found out later that Woldy was inviting this New York backhoe driver to come to our island wilderness property to help with the on-going construction of our cabin. The two evening banquet with there keynote speakers (Harriet Schiff, Melody Beattie, and Richard Paul Evans —we have their books in our TCF library), and music by siblings, were both relaxing and inspiring. Robins’ husband, Mark Kingery, ended the last banquet by lighting a candle for his son, and then transferring that light, person-by person to candles held by each of us. When 800 candles lit up the otherwise darkened room we raised them and said together, “To our children!” As you can imagine, even the most seasoned among us shed tears. The following morning we hugged goodbyes to our many new friends after we all walked two miles through Salt Lake City, wearing tee-shirts reading “We Need Not Walk Alone.” Cathy Sosnowsky TCF North Vancouver   Note: Cathy will be presenting a writing/journalizing workshop at the Northern Lights ~ Reflections of Healing Conference, May 22-25/2003 in Brandon, MB. THANKSGIVING THOUGHTS   Thanksgiving Day is a day for giving thanks over and over: to repeat our thanks for the life our loved ones lived on earth; to recapitulate our thanks for all the good of all the years we lived with them and now live without them. Thanksgiving is a holiday, by definition a happy day. It is a family-and-friend holiday. If it’s our first Thanksgiving, or our second or third, with “one too few” we may resent the whole idea of being thankful. However, most of us are more than willing to talk about the ones we have lost, and if that’s all we can manage, that’s all we should try to manage. How we grievers long on the special days to have our loved ones acknowledged. Their absence. Their presence. To have others listen as we share our memories of them. To listen as others share their memories. Well, that sad-glad sharing, too is thanksgiving. From “Making it Through the Toughest Days of Grief” by Meg Woodson MASQUES In idle conversation you ask me about my children. You are an acquaintance. I do not know you well and so I don a masque. I speak happily of joys, light heartedly of mischief, but I do not speak of death. I do not want to see the shadow of uncertainty pass your face and feel the awkward silence that falls like a curtain between us. I do not want to say,” It’s OK, that was a long time ago.” It will never be quite “okay” and sometimes it seems as if it happened yesterday. And so I take my masque along with me through life like a perpetual Halloween night, to hide just a bit from people and to preserve my strength. For mourning is tiring and each time I recount that day of death, I am a little wearied. I would rather speak of the joys in his life than the sorrows of his death to strangers who absently ask of children. Yet tragedy is more universal than I had ever know before it touched my life. And so many times I wonder who else looks out from behind a masque. Karen Nelson TCF Columbia, MO         NO DISGUISE (Out of the mouths of babes!) “Melissa, what will you and your sister be on this Halloween?” the teacher asked. “I’m going to be a clown and Katie Rose is gonna be Minnie Mouse. Lindsay doesn’t have a costume; she’s still gonna be an Angel.”   Melissa Gensler (5 years old) TCF South Central, Kentucky Newsletter   BECAUSE Because you can’t feel me, Doesn’t mean I’m not there. Because you can’t see me, Doesn’t mean I not near. Because you can’t hear me, Doesn’t mean I don’t speak. Because you can’t see me, Doesn’t mean I’m out of reach. Because I am dead, Doesn’t mean I’m gone. Beth Oldani TCF, Arlington Heights, IL   [ Home ] [ July August ]