Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child (22 page)

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Authors: Rita Volpe

BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child
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The brothers grew up in a car culture in which what you drove and how you drove it were an important part of who you were. Ironically, on the night he was killed, Michael was by himself and driving “the family tank,” a heavy station wagon. Old habits are hard to shake and Tom continued to drive with abandon for a while after his brother’s death. He was not consciously tempting fate, it was simply the way of life to which he was accustomed, but one which became less a part of him as he grew older.
Tom:
“I totaled a car the year after Michael died. I made sure I got home before the car was towed there. I knew they had to see me first. I drove crazy for a while, but I’ve calmed down now.”
Barry: “It was my first experience with the death of anyone close to me. When you are young you don’t really comprehend it. But I don’t think when my sister died I thought of my own mortality.”
Allegra: “I came to the realization that I am an only child and my parents are going to die someday and I’m going to be left alone. If I don’t have some very good friends, I’m really in trouble.”
For our parents the deaths destroyed the joy of holidays and family occasions. We, too, were robbed of those times, although most of us now have the comfort of our own spouses and children.
Barry: “The holidays are different for me now that I have my own kids. But
they are still bittersweet. I don’t want to say it’s easier, but we try to spend as many holidays as we can together. Probably Mother’s Day is the toughest and my sister’s birthday and the anniversary of her death.”
Philip: “As my other brother Eric and I have gotten older and started our families, I am aware that we are missing not only Howie, but the family he would have had. It creates some sadness that goes along with every celebration. It doesn’t stop us from enjoying family gatherings, it’s just something that is there.”
Holidays and special occasions mean greeting cards in our society, but it’s very difficult for us to find cards that express love for our parents and yet acknowledge the loss that never leaves them.
Wendy: “It’s hard to find a card that doesn’t show the perfect family. They all seem to say things such as, ‘Mom, you are the best, you deserve the best,’ but such words can be hurtful in our situation. I look and I analyze the cards. It’s like walking on eggshells.”
Tom: “I get blank cards.”
Debi: “All those cards wishing you ‘the best year ever.’ It’s not going to be the best year ever.”
Tom: “Christmas used to be the four of us. Michael’s absence becomes a huge presence.”
Allegra: “Stuff that wouldn’t even occur to me will set my parents off. Cards that wish the best year ever? Absolutely not. To me it’s so benign, but everything takes on new connotations.”
Wendy: “We changed our holidays. In the beginning my older sister had little kids and that was the only reason my mother continued doing anything. It was all for the grandchildren. We switched to having Chanukah at the club rather than at home.”
Now, when we look at our own children we can better understand the depth of our parents’ loss. Having our own children has made us perhaps more wary than other parents. We have witnessed the fragility of life firsthand.
Abbe: “I don’t know that I am overly overprotective, but I have a lot of fears and anxieties about loss. When my kids were younger I went on field trips and drove places so as not to worry about transportation.”
Debi: “Jess became an aunt to my children when she was seven years old.
Countless, joyful hours were spent with she and my children reading, playing games, baking cookies. They loved her with all their hearts and I loved that she was so much a part of their lives. A while after Jess died we renovated our home and my son had to take down the glow-in-the-dark stars that he and Jess had put up in his bedroom. He was extraordinarily upset since it was the last vestige of his contact with her. It broke my heart.”
Barry: “You have a certain kind of love for your sibling. You are a family unit with deep feelings for one another, but when you have your own and feel the love for that child, you feel like ‘wow,’ you can’t imagine the pain of losing a child. You see them grow up and they are a part of you, it’s very different.”
Wendy: “A sibling is devastating … but your own child … . I was one of three before Lisa died and I have two children. I told my gynecologist I wanted a third child and he asked why. When I told him he said that was the best reason he’d ever heard for having a third child.”
Barry: “I told my daughter, ‘I lost my sister in a car accident and I’m not losing you.’ We are very strict about who she can get in a car with. Once she lied to us about who drove her home. I said, ‘This is playing with fire and it’s nonnegotiable. ’ Maybe you become more overprotective.”
Philip: “I have learned from Howie’s death how little in life we can control. I can be neurotic about safety on the school bus and it still may not matter. We couldn’t protect Howie from everything and I can’t protect my son from everything. That is the terrifying reality.”
Much like our parents, we questioned God. How could this happen? Could we still have any religious beliefs?
Tom: “We were a religious family. Michael’s death made me question God. Actually, I was always something of a doubter. Over the years I’ve walked away from organized religion … not because of my brother … but over the years. At first I felt there was no God, but I’ve found my way back.”
Nowadays, Tom’s religion is more one of personal beliefs rather than part of any organized practice.
Tom: “Over time, through an incredible amount of pain, I grew to understand things differently. I don’t call it anything. No one has the answers. It’s knowing there’s a great power of energy out there. I don’t need a man with a book telling me what to do. I realize there is no joy without suffering. No light
without dark. I’m no longer daring death in a car or otherwise, because I’m no longer scared of it.”
Barry: “I don’t think it changed my religion one way or another. We looked to our rabbi for support, hoping he would have some answers. But, I don’t think they enlighten you in any way as to why something like this happens. You just wonder who is responsible for letting this happen to your family.”
Philip: “It has always bothered me that Judaism does not seem to acknowledge the sibling as a mourner. I attend the memorial service at Yom Kippur. In the prayer book there are prayers for those mourning a parent, a spouse, a child, but nothing for a sibling. We fall into the miscellaneous mourners category. It is jarring and hurtful. I have gone through periods of wanting to reject religion completely. On the other hand, I still identify with being a Jew.”
Wendy: “My parents went to temple a lot in the year after. Something like going to temple to help the deceased’s soul reach heaven. I kind of went for her and my family. But there are always questions … what did we do to deserve this?”
Debi: “Neither Judaism nor God had played any appreciable role in my life … but Jessica’s death changed all that. On the day Jess died my daughter was to have her birthday party, but I could not get organized. I went out and bought a black dress that I did not even try on. When I returned home the telephone rang. It was my dad telling me Jess had been killed. A spiritual adviser later told me that an angel … possibly a deceased grandparent … had visited me on that day to help prepare me for the impending news of Jessica’s death. Having had this spiritual connection, I now regularly pray to God and find enormous peace and comfort in my unwavering belief that my parents and I will again be with Jessica.”
Our mothers met through the Compassionate Friends support group. They took us to meetings, but none of us was able to bond with these groups.
Barry: “I went to a meeting with my mother. I found it very difficult. There’s a kind of guilt, like you’re doing it for your parents, because it would make them feel good. I could see it really comforted these people at the meetings to see they are not alone, they’re not crazy and these are normal feelings they are experiencing. But I was not keen on it.”
Wendy: “My mother wanted me to go to a sibling support group, but I never went. I went to some meeting where the people were talking about losing someone who was like in their fifties. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about. I walked out.”
Debi: “I went to one and heard parents saying their child had died ten years before and I thought, ‘Oh, my God,’ their grief is still fresh all these years later.”
When Neill Perri died at the age of twenty-three, his brother Phillip was nineteen, and they were best friends. Asked to place something in Neill’s casket, Phillip could only respond, “I’m placing my tears in with my brother.” And so it is with most brothers and sisters who lose a sibling.
When we met we could barely speak, paralyzed and frozen we sat.
We leaned on one another and were able to stand,
And slowly we learned to walk.
As time passed a bond formed from the love of our children lost,
A friendship forged in pain grew into love and laughter.
Together we have found new ways to live and love and remember the life.
Longing for a time that exists in heart’s memory, together we talk of our children
and smile with silent tears.
Dear friend, thank you for walking the valley with me.
Thank you for sharing the love.
As we climb together we can see ahead more clearly.
We can see them in the distance smiling, waiting and proud.
If we could only touch them … . until then we hold … one another.
Rita Volpe
W
e are ever grateful to that intimate circle of family and friends who surrounded us and supported us in our early grief and have stayed on. As the years pass by and others tend to forget, these special few are always there to share a memory, a tear or a laugh.
We thank our agent, Bob Markel, a truly gentle man. His inner fortitude is made all the stronger by his keen understanding of the vicissitudes of life. Who but Bob could have remained unruffled and in good humor in the face of nine bereaved mothers and their collaborator, all of us anxious, first-time authors? He provided unflagging confidence even as we were unsure of ourselves.
We acknowledge those who walked us through the process at St. Martin’s Press. Editor Jennifer Weis saw instinctively that this book is more than just a paean to our lost children, that it carries a vital message
for the too many others who must bear such a tragedy. Assistant editor Stefanie Lindskog has offered sage advice and answered questions that only neophyte authors could ask. We thank her for her unfailing patience and constant good cheer.
We are indebted to the Compassionate Friends organization. We nine first met there and later went on to form our own bond. The Compassionate Friends group is a major factor in the healing process for thousands of bereaved parents throughout the nation. Information about Compassionate Friends can be found at 877-969-0010 or on the Web at
www.compassionatefriends.org
.
To our husbands, whose input is an integral part of this book. We thank them for their unconditional love and understanding.
To our surviving children, who have had to endure far more than young people should ever have to endure. There were times when you had to become the parent to us and help us along the way. We love you more than mere words can express.
We are grateful to each other. The nine of us are each other’s support network. We have leaned on one another from the early days of our bereavement; we will likely lean on one another throughout the rest of our lives. We are each other’s alter egos and each other’s best friends.
There were times when one or more of us found that calling up painful details for this book was just too much to bear and would gladly have given up the project. But we kept at it, thanks much to the gentle prodding of Phyllis Levine, our catalyst. In turn, each of us thanks the other for their unique and valuable contributions to these pages. Without one and all, there would be no book.
We thank our lost children for smiling down on us. We can hear them saying, “Way to go, Ma.”
F
or so long we have lived in our own small, sad cocoons, frozen in time, wrapped up in our own environment and oblivious to the outside world. Such an existence has provided us with a feeling of security, although we have learned the hard way that nothing in life is truly secure. Our detachment from our surroundings gave us the freedom to do only that which we could bring ourselves to focus upon, namely think about our lost children. The minutiae of everyday life dared not intrude upon our suffering.
Now our cocoons are opening, light is beginning to creep in where before there was only darkness. The physical and emotional pain that engulfed us for so long has begun to melt slowly away. In a strange way, we fear and even regret its passing. It has made for a constant bond with our dead children … and that was all we wanted.
At this point in our lives, we find we are becoming more absorbed in things we never thought we would care about again. This is a new road for us, one we take with trepidation because we have learned from personal tragedy that there is never any way to be certain of what lies ahead. We have no control over events. We did not choose this lot in life, but we do now choose to move forward. We believe strongly that this is the right road and the one our children would want us to walk.
We are nine mothers who carried our children within our bodies for nine months prior to their births and nurtured them into young adulthood. As we move ahead with our lives, we will continue to carry our children very much within ourselves until such time as we are with them again … . That is what mothers do.

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