Our son Isaac died at the age of 26 in 2005. We have not been whole since. We carry on and even have days of happiness with our surviving daughter, her husband,
grandchildren and some friends but we live trying to precariously balance death in life.
When Isaac died it was as if a leg were cut off and we lost
our
balance for
a very
long time. It
is simply not easy to
balance on one foot. Just try it. You may ha ve seconds of
steadiness and
control but
then, imperceptibly
something
happens to disrupt your equilibrium. You begin to
fall
and have to put the other foot down. Try to imagine what it is like to not have the other foot. Can’t put it down and well, you fall.
That is what life is like after one loses a child. It is an
eternity of trying to balance on one foot. Sometimes
it
can be maintained for a while but inevitably balance is lost and
you fall down.
This
is an account of losing a leg, falling down, getting up
and then learning how to balance as best as is possible on
one foot.
It is the story and
impressions of death,
grief and resolution to live again without a significant part of our lives.
Most books on grief and the death of a child tend to work
in the mode of a journey from great pain, grief and then
some sort of recovery into life. This book
may not fully be one like that
though it does finally
get
to some sort
of
new status in
life. But maybe not a full recovery which may
not
exist. I am not at all sure that there is real revival or full
mending from the loss of a child. If there is, I fully admit I
have not
yet wholly found it.
Just the other day after six
years since our son’s death, I was
struck, blindsided by a sudden realization that he was gone
and would not be coming back. My
life
fell back into depression. Grief had
snuck up on me again. Grabbed me as I sat there cross-legged in the calm belief that I was coping
with it all well.
Yet I have to say that I am actually dealing with it better.
The grief,
the pain, the loss all
have generally become less intense. Less immediate. But the longing to be with, to
see, and to hold my son again has never gone away.
He
did go away and left me with a phantom pain
that exists
most every day. Yes, I know tha t most books on grief and loss work their way to a point at which life goes on and
there is
peace and calm. They can’t help it. They do not want
to simply leave the reader with the hurt of
the
possibility that the loss of a child is an
event that just does
not disappear fully. Unlike a bad day at work or an intense sunburn
that hurts like hell, burns like fire but does fade away and all is normal at some point. All is well again and
the skin
heals over so things are like they were before
getting burnt. Not so for the death of a child.
The
death of a child is such a traumatic experience that there is no other event that is strong enough to make it fade. The pain does diminish. The grief finds a place within
the
daily aspects
of life. The excruciating
agony
of loss does weaken into an everyday longing that sits at the back of the day like an imp just waiting for a chance to invade
your psyche. Demanding an
exorcism of
and
by
depression. Life becomes
livable but maybe not
fully
expandable.
Most
books like to work
to a climax
at
which life is again
open and even happy. They are after all written to try
and
help people survive
grief and loss. They discuss
coping
skills. They tell of how
we made progress on the passage from utter despair to
learning to
live with
t he
loss. But along the way they leave out the pain
and some of the raw
reality of part of that journey.
This
one will not leave them out. It won’t because too often
grieving
parents have experiences that they believe are aberrant or make them abnormal. From real physical pain and memories that don’t
want to function properly to soul
dragging depression to
even thoughts of suicide.
These are all normal if anything is normal
after the loss of a child.
Much of the time, the books on losing a child and grief ar e
written
trying
to
help the
reader learn how to cope. Written by psychologists, grief practitioners or even
parents who lost a child. This is normal for them to try and help with
inspiring works that gloss over
some of the realities,
some of the anguish of the grief leaving readers wondering
if
their deeper, more painful journeys are somehow atypical. They are not. There is no typical grief.
This book shares
aspects
of loss
and
grief
that are too
often left
out
of the journey
back to
stasis
that parents must take to
survive
and move on. It will try not to leave anything out
so you know others have gone through what you have and are going through on your journey to becoming more whole again and re-balance life with grief.
But it is after all my journey so I c an only relate what I went through from
the
losing of balance in life, to guilt,
depression,
thoughts
of suicide, even
brief longings for
death
but
it may
well be different
than
that
of others. There are similarities in
all
bereavement it seems though.
And
these will be discussed through my own journey and
my
learning to balance on one leg and hop through life.
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