What Do The Kids Want?

In my last post, I shared some of the ways that we differ in our grieving process. Men do things to try to make everyone feel better. Women talk and talk to try to feel better but what do children want after the death of a sibling or parent? I am convinced that children want just two things, to feel loved and to feel normal.

This is where support groups are so important. As parents talk with each other, sharing stories and coping mechanisms, they are better able to give their surviving children the love that is so deeply needed. Before every holiday or milestone event, we were able to discuss with other parents their experiences, the pitfalls they encountered and what they suggested to help us deal with the issues. This is help you simply cannot get from a book. It is hard earned experience and honest sharing.

Children receive the same support from other children. More than once, someone will relate to me a nugget of wisdom that one child shares with another in grief support groups. If you think that parents can give child all the skills needed for coping with a death, then you must think that grieving parents are perfect. So kids share their experiences and work through the process together. The other great gift from a support group is the feeling of normalcy.

Until Warren died, I really didn' t know how often children experience the death of a significant person in their lives. But if you were to take a classroom of 20 first graders, by the time they reach high school, at least three children will experience the death of a parent, brother or sister. Many years ago, this was a normal part of life as so many children died of disease, but somehow I think we believe, we have wiped out childhood death along with smallpox. The kids who do experience this feel alone because no one wants to talk about it. For several months after Warren died, other parents who had lost a child would talk to us quietly about their experience, but the children remained silent.

In the support groups, everyone talks openly about their loved one's death. Normalcy does begin with the sense that you are not the only one in the room who is experiencing grief. Normalcy is when your parents stop being zombies and start to actively love you again in familiar
ways.

We were very lucky that concerned friends told us about Journey of Hope Grief Support Center almost immediately
after Warren died. He died in June. We started to attend the support groups before school started in August. It was still a rocky year at times but I shudder to think how miserable we could have made each other without the support.

For more information about Journey of Hope Grief Support or other topics, go to www.johgriefsupport.org. If you have a comment or suggestion, please feel free to post to this blog or e-mail me at kricester@gmail.com
Journey of Hope also has a Facebook page and you can follow their events and activities there.

Sex and the Grieving Parent

With apologies to our daughters, this isn't really about sex.

Men and women experience grief differently. I am certain that in a large measure, this accounts for the staggeringly high divorce rate among parents who lose a child to death.

It seems to me and this is NOT scientific; that when men are going through the loss of a child, they want to fix the problem, for everyone who is hurting. For many men, if a hammer would fix it, then they would be on their way back to normalcy much sooner. But women, it seems, want to talk and talk and talk. My husband Mark and I went through this.

I'd tell him that I was extra sad because of some triggering event so he would unload the dishwasher and take out the trash. Then, if my mood hadn't improved yet, he'd mow the lawn and clean the pool. On days, when I was feeling extra bad, he would even fill my car's gas tank and make sure it was washed. Sure all this was nice, but I really wanted to talk about my feelings.

It took some time before I realized that he was listening and responding to how I felt. He wanted to do something to make me feel better. He just didn't want to talk about my feelings again, some more.

I suspect that many women take this difference in handling a situation for lack of compassion. Many men probably think, "OMG, I am trying so hard, why won't my wife see that?"

But you see, Mark and I had been married for a long time when Warren died, 23 years. So our relationship was what it was, solid, lasting. Not everyone has this base to build upon. Still it was difficult because we each grieved in our own way. Mark threw himself into his work. He became the best provider that he could be. I tried to become a supermom. Normally, these aren't compatible, we easily could have both "burnt-out" but we made it work because we wanted to for our daughters.

As far as the sex thing goes, yes, you still have sex after you have children and even when one dies. It is a normal, loving thing. Intimacy helps love grow stronger. I was lucky enough to be married to a man who understood that and hey, he even talked to me about it.

What you lose is the Future.

There is a big difference in losing an adult that you love and losing your child. When my dad died, it seemed a natural but sad part of life. I would have to rely on a lifetime of memories. It was sad but not unexpected.

When Warren died, it did not seem natural. Even though losing a child often happens, it cannot be natural. I believe that it is because when your parent or spouse dies, you lose someone you love. Someone you made memories with. But you have the memories. You made this person a part of the cloth of your life. He or she has already been woven in and the fabric is sturdy, whole, robust, can survive almost any environmental challenge.

The death of a child is different. What you lose is the future. I think about it often and it comes about in the most unexpected ways. Sometimes I see a young man on an airplane or in a store and he reminds me of what Warren might be or could be today. He should be 25 years old. He should be a college graduate, he might have fallen in love, got married. We missed out on all these events. They can never be reclaimed. These events will never be part of the fabric of our lives. I am frequently reminded about these loses. Last summer, my oldest daughter graduated with her master's degree. It was an awesome event, she graduated with a three-week old baby in her arms. Yet in the midst of this, one of Warren's friends graduated with a bachelor's degree that same day, same university. I was there to witness his family celebrate his milestone and was reminded that this was never to be mine.

Did I enjoy the day anyway? Absolutely. I probably treasure each special moment even more now that I know what it feels like to lose the future. Incidentally, having a grandchild has restored my joy in looking forwardnto the future in ways that are unexpected and wonderful.

Memories and the Other Things We Keep

My basement (really the room above the garage) is full of things from my children's childhood. There are ribbons for competitions, essays they wrote, student of the month awards, clothes and toys. This week Sarah started helping me organize my photographs and there were tens of thousands of photos and I still don't have much that predates Warren's death more than 10 years ago saved on my computer.

Yet there is always some discussion of when and how you should "dispose" of your loved ones' belongings after death. I only bring this up because three of my friends have lost their mother this summer and another is watching her parents lose their battle with old age. Some people think that you need to clean-out and give things away quickly because it is a sign of moving on with the grieving process. Other people I know have left their parents things sit for years. My Uncle's home is still filled with the stuff my Grandmother stored in his spare room, some dating back more than 50 years.

I have to say that when my Dad died, I didn't even pay much attention to his stuff. I think it is mostly gone now because a couple of years after his death, my Mom moved into a newer, smaller home. With Warren, it was different. I felt like I had to be sensitive to his sisters and Mark as I cleaned out his room. So we went along in fits and starts. The room was painted, the bed thrown away. I tried to make the room my office but it didn't suit me as an office. It felt like it should be a bedroom so we put a bed back in there. I kept all his toys and books although, most of then probably should have been thrown away or donated and his clothes went into big storage tubs that to this day, I haven't unpacked.

Although I kept all these things, I never revisit them. They don't bring me comfort and I doubt that looking at one of his pairs of shorts would evoke any meaningful memories at this point.

There is a photograph that I love. It was taken by a friend of mine at a school event. It is just a close up of Warren's face and my Dad's face and they were smiling and having fun. Oh yes, that makes me think of so many happy times that Warren spent with my father. It is definitely a memory worth revisiting often. So keep the memories and get rid of the stuff, but only when you are ready.

If you have any comments, please post them or you can comtact me directly at kricester@gmail.com.

Abandoned Shopping Carts

When your child dies, heaven help your other children. When Warren died, he had two sisters, Elissa and Sarah. They were perfect and wonderful children, just as he was. They also ran the risk of becoming the forgotten siblings. In many families, child who dies is canonized and the real living children become the imperfect ones. Mark and I had seen this play out within our own family and were determined not to let this happen. But it did not seem to matter, we neglected them anyway.

The problem was, we were imperfect and distracted parents. We were caught up in our own grief and forgot to tend what was most important to us, at least temporarily. For example, I often didn't cook dinner. Now for some families, I know that this isn't a big deal, but for our family, it is a deal breaker. I always cook. It is my favorite hobby. Recreational cooking isn't just an idea, it is my greatest hobby. But when Warren died, I lost the will to cook. I couldn't focus. I didn't even want to because if you asked Warren where he wanted to eat dinner, he always asked me to cook at home.

So for many months, our food was cobbled together. If a church group or some friends too pity on us, we had a good meal. If not, we might just have eaten fast food.

It wasn't that I wanted to neglect things, I simply couldn't focus. I would go to the grocery store, then I would see something that would spark a memory. Good memories were actually worse than bad. I'd remember, sometimes cry but almost always would abandon my shopping cart, mid-store, and come home. The girls would come home from school and the cupboards were as bare as if I had never tried.

Journey of Hope, Grief Support were for a few months the reliable hot, home cooked meal that this family got to eat. Plus we got the bonus of fellowship with other families who were in the same place we were. But the conversations were almost always, light and unstrained. These meals were important to us and still are.

Often times, people ask me what they can do for a grieving family, and I say cook for them. Not right away, but in a month or two. Because when the initial outpouring of care subsides and everyone goes away, it does get tougher.

For more information about the Journey of Hope Grief Support Center and the services they offer, please visit http://www.johgriefsupport.org/.

If you want to make a comment or offer suggestions on how other parents can avoid abandoning shopping carts, please comment on this blog of contact me at kricester@gmail.com.