Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child (4 page)

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Authors: Ellen Mitchell

BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child
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Ariella: “Our children have experienced something we have yet to experience. They died before us. We have a need to know what they now know.”
Lorenza: “I call it an ‘umbilical cord reaction.’ I want to know: What was he thinking? Did he see it coming? Was he aware? The pain he felt was connected to my body.”
Barbara E.: “I was with Brian in those moments of his death. I had a sense he was someplace else. It was comforting. It stopped me from becoming hysterical. Now, years later, I want to know where he is.”
Phyllis: “Andrea was still alive when we got to the hospital. I held her hand. I think she waited for me to come.”
Rita: “I didn’t want Michael to be afraid. He was out of control, driving toward a pole. I belonged there. I didn’t want him to feel that fear alone and die alone.”
Lorenza: “Reading helped me a lot, but only books about the loss of a child. I was always looking for answers and for people who expressed their pain in a
sensitive manner. I looked for words that really meant something to me. I carry those words with me still.”
Barbara G. : “I copied those sentences down. Words to live by.”
Ariella: “I read a book written by a mother telling of her son’s illness and of her conversations with him about death and dying. And that helped me because I’d never had that conversation with Michael. It was a way of understanding what he might have felt.”
Perhaps the most cathartic thing we all did in the weeks and months following the deaths of our children was to return to work, albeit in most cases we returned in an almost zombie-like state. We hoped work would be a distraction, although we felt enormous anxiety and our energy level was zero. Fortunately, each of us was employed outside the home and it proved to be, without exaggeration, life saving.
Carol: “I couldn’t spend two minutes by myself. I couldn’t go home alone.”
Rita: “As soon as you were left alone, it went to the very core of you.”
Barbara E.: “I went back to work after three months. I kept to myself, preferring not to talk to anyone; instead I cried. I think most people were glad to avoid me.”
Maddy: “Neill died in June and I went back to work after the summer. People asked me, ‘How was your summer?’”
Ariella: “We have our own business. My husband got me there. I’d sit and read and cry. He’d try to work. At noon, he took my hand and took me to lunch. We’d get home at two or three o’clock … and repeat the same thing the next day. We did that for two months.”
Lorenza: “I went back to teaching in November. Marc died in September. As a dedicated teacher, I couldn’t tell the kids to study and they would succeed. Look what happened to my son.”
Phyllis: “I went back after a week. I went into the lady’s room. I was a basket case. One of my coworkers was so thoughtful. She asked if I would mind if her daughter phoned her at work, knowing I would never again hear my daughter’s voice on the phone.”
Barbara G. : “My father drove me back to work. My hands shook too much to drive. He stayed there and waited. As the day went on, he knew when it was time for me to leave. He could tell when I needed to get away from everyone.”
Rita: “I taught science and some of the kids were in my class the year before as well. They came to Michael’s funeral. The kids took care of me. When they left my class, I fell apart.”
Audrey: “Like a robot, I got up every morning and went to work. Several times a day, I would feel a jolt in the back of my head, the sudden realization that Jessie was really gone.”
From the very outset of our grief, there was an enormous need to form bonds with other bereaved parents. It took us a while to understand the importance of that connection and what it would mean to our lives forever after.
Ariella: “You gravitate to those people who lost children in the same way you did. You understand each other.”
Was the first year the worst? We sat and dissected that question and we cannot agree on one definitive answer. We do concur that we were in shock throughout those first twelve months and it cushioned some of the pain, which we later felt more acutely. However, we also know that eventually the horrific pain began to ebb for most although not all of us. Over time, we have been able to cast off some of the agony and disbelief and accept the fact that our lives continue, although in a vastly altered state.
Phyllis: “We were looking for normal. What was normal? We can never know normal again.”
Marc loved the water. Before he ever bought a car, he bought a boat. Any free time he had he spent outdoors, exploring and observing nature. But always he was drawn to the ocean, to smell the salt air and listen to the breaking of the waves. He would say to me, “Ma, come and sit here while I fish. Just enjoy the sunset and the beauty all around.”
Those quiet times are among my most precious memories. I can no longer sit by the water and think it is beautiful. It has taken my only son.
I remember when Marc was only two years old. My husband Joe and I had gone on vacation in Mexico while my mother babysat. We returned late one night and the entire house was lit up. There was Marc at the window waiting. He was all dressed up and wearing a tiny bow tie. He wanted to look nice for us.
We could always depend upon Marc to do the right thing. He was self-disciplined beyond his years and he never asked for much. We even entrusted him with the key to the house at a young age.
As he grew older, he was the kid in ripped jeans before it became the fashion; let his classmates wear the designer labels. He played touch football wearing his father’s old college sweatpants. Joe cherishes those frayed old pants to this day. Marc arrived home from the University of Massachusetts one day sporting an earring. He smiled at our disapproving reaction and pulled it off; it had been glued on. In fact, Marc thoroughly enjoyed shocking us. He stood out at his college graduation: the kid with a tee shirt peeking out from under his graduation robe that read, “My parents think I went to college.”
Marc was filled with spirit and compassion. He was sensitive, spirited and thoughtful, loving and loyal, and always he made us laugh with his biting and self-deprecating sense of humor. After he died, a coworker would describe him as having “a gleam in his eye and laughter in his voice.”
Over the years, his pets included a menagerie of birds, a dog, several cats, a chick, a turtle, a newt and countless fish. When our cat was gravely ill, Marc was ready to foot the bill of more than one thousand
dollars to save him. He shared in the expense but later he mercifully took the cat to be put to sleep, and wrote a touching note of appreciation to the veterinarian.
Marc’s love for fishing bordered on the obsessive. He kept diaries of the fish he caught and where and when he caught them. By 1995, Marc was twenty-five and a marine biologist working with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Earlier he had worked at a fish hatchery, a bird sanctuary and the zoo.
The year 1995 held such promise. Marc got married. He and his bride Kate were settling into their new home. Joe had recently retired. He and Marc were bonding as two grown men, looking forward to different projects such as working on Marc’s house. Joe and I made plans to travel to Arizona.
It seemed as though we were flying on a carpet when suddenly the carpet was pulled from beneath us.
Joe and I had been to Marc and Kate’s house for a barbecue. Marc proudly showed us his first vegetable garden. It was a visual cornucopia of cucumbers, yellow squash, purple eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and basil. Seeds we later harvested from that garden still continue to give us tomatoes and peppers.
As we left that day, we talked of how much we enjoyed being with them both. Marc happily replied, “We’ll do it again.” Again never came.
Because I was still teaching that year, Joe usually did the grocery shopping. One day in late September, I decided to tag along with him. As we went through the aisles, I was amazed at the high cost of food. At about 5 P.M., while still in the store, I felt a spontaneous, jarring pain, an emotional rush. Instantly, I thought of Marc and his new bride, Kate. I commented to Joe that I wondered how they could afford such exorbitant food prices.
We would later learn that it was at that very time … 5 P.M … . that the sea took Marc away.
Several hours later, I sat reading in the kitchen while Joe was upstairs. The doorbell rang. Two policemen. One said something about Marc’s driver’s license having our address and that they had not been
able to contact his wife. They were having difficulty telling us that our son had died in a fishing accident. They told us Marc had been taken to a local hospital. We drove there; we cried out, praying it had all been a horrid mistake.
At the hospital, a social worker met us and coldly informed us that our son had been taken to the morgue. He had no idea how to direct us there, however, and we waited for half an hour to learn the location. We then stumbled in the dark from building to building seeking out the morgue. Once there, we were told we were too late and would have to wait until morning to identify the body. I screamed, I shrieked, and said I was not leaving until I had seen my son. They took us to Marc.
He looked peaceful, smiling as if he were dreaming. I wanted to reach out and touch him but he was behind a glass window. I do not know how we left him that night, but we had to go. We turned back and drove away, knowing we must then tell Marc’s bride that her husband was dead. Then we would have to phone our daughter, Allegra, who was away on business in California, and tell her that her brother was gone.
How had it all happened?
That day had been warm and sunny. Marc was working on his house when he suddenly opted to take off and go fishing instead. He wanted to try out a location on Long Island Sound, one that was unknown to him but which friends had told him about. Fishermen nearby and others sitting on the beach saw Marc from a distance as he walked into what appeared to be calm surf. He wore heavy waders, as he always did when surf casting. He apparently did not know the depth of the water there and the sand level beneath him suddenly dropped. Witnesses said they saw Marc being pulled under by a riptide. His waders filled with water and he was gone. Nobody did anything to save him; perhaps there was nothing to be done. The investigating detective said, “He never had a chance.”
Questions tormented me then and torment me still. Why couldn’t someone have saved my son? Did he see the danger he was in? What were his last thoughts? Did he suffer? Where was his guardian angel that day? Was it my son’s time? Was it his destiny?
Neither Joe nor I had ever buried anyone close to us before that time. Now we had to go and select a burial plot for our son. Kate and Allegra worked out the details of the service, selecting the prayers, the flowers and, eventually, the gravestone. The stone is engraved with two large striped bass and the words, “The Call of the Sea Could Not Be Denied.”
Later, Marc’s friends and colleagues at work would place a five-foot high stone and a plaque in his memory at one of his favorite fishing haunts. They sent us stories about Marc that we never knew. He had illuminated so many lives. We learned that his friends will always remember Marc as that unassuming, cheerful guy who wore floppy white boots when working at the zoo, stuck a garbage bag over his body to protect himself from the rain, and saw the beauty of nature wherever he went.
One of my most precious memories is a comment he made to me after his return from his two-week honeymoon in St. Lucia earlier that year. Joe and I had given them that honeymoon as a gift.
“Ma,” he said, “thanks for sending me to paradise.”
Lorenza Colletti
We Are Not Alone
W
e are the closest of friends. We share the deepest intimacies of our lives. We wish we had never met.
Even though we were totally shrouded in grief, in the weeks and months following the deaths of our children, we somehow came to realize that if we were going to continue living … and some of us were not at all sure we wanted to continue living. We would need help.
Lorenza: “When you lose a child, you need someone who understands your pain, someone who has been there and knows you will never be the same. I was desperate.”
Several of us were able to reach out and grab hold of a lifeline on our own, others had to be shaken from our stupor by friends or family. All of us believed deep down that no power on earth could possibly assuage our agony.
Individually, each of us made our way to the Compassionate Friends, a world-wide mutual assistance and self-help organization for bereaved parents and siblings.
Your pain becomes my pain,
Your hope becomes my hope.
We come together from all walks of life,
from many different circumstances …
We are all seeking and struggling to build a future … .
Excerpted from the Compassionate Friends’ credo
Although the nine of us met through Compassionate Friends, we would not want to leave the impression that ours is the only group of its type. There are many similar bereavement groups, and there are many other avenues of support. Among these are groups that bind together because of the manner in which their children died, perhaps due to a certain illness, or murder or suicide, or even because of an event such as the 9/11 tragedy.
There are also religion-based groups. Compassionate Friends is totally nondenominational. There is spirituality in our discussions, but religion is left to other support groups. Some of us have found comfort in being part of both nondenominational and religious support groups.
The important thing is to accept that help is available. There may not be answers, but there is help. For us, the greatest source of help has come from being with others who have trod the same path.
Phyllis: “There is no place that a bereaved parent can go and feel as comfortable as they can in a room with other families who have been through the pain of losing a child.”
And while each of us found that to be true, we have also learned that organized support groups are not for everybody. Many grieving couples and single parents as well want nothing to do with communal grief. In some families, one partner may need such a connection, while the other wants no part of it. Grief is a highly individual matter: we never know how we’ll experience it until life leaves us no choice.
At first, most of us only reluctantly visited a support group. For the most part, we were not joiners. But none of us has ever regretted her decision to join.
Rita: “I was never a groupie, but we learned about Compassionate Friends and it became something I had to do. I don’t know what got me through the moments until the next meeting. I went to all of them. It was something to look forward to, much as I hate to even use the words ‘look forward to.’”
Lorenza: “I never belonged to any group. I always felt I was invincible and could overcome any difficulties on my own. When this tragedy hit, I did not know where to turn; I wanted desperately to find another mother who had lost a child.”
In the early stages of our grief, none of us was capable of accepting the reality that our children were gone and were never coming back. That they had perished from this earth never to walk through the door again—never to call to us, argue with us, hug us—was beyond the realm of what we could absorb.
Carol: “We were only three weeks bereaved when we went to the first meeting. We saw all these people there and we thought we didn’t belong; we weren’t joiners. These people were not our type and they didn’t have all the right answers. Lisa was gone and they couldn’t bring her back. But we continued going to the meetings. It was a place to go.”
Barbara E.: “I thought they would give me a timetable to follow, that there would be rules to grieve by and a right way to do it. If I followed their advice, it would bring my son back.”
Being in the company of parents who seemed to be acknowledging the death of a son or daughter, and who were able to verbalize that in a group session, was very difficult for us to accept at the outset.
Audrey: “When we first got to the meeting, I felt like I didn’t belong. Who were these people reciting how they had lost their child? This was not me. Please don’t put me in their category.”
Ironically, we know that professionals sometimes try to dissuade a grieving parent from joining a support group. Their reasons have validity, but we also know that professional counselors usually cannot know the depths of our despair.
Barbara G.: “My husband and I were seeing a bereavement counselor, but that
was not enough. She had not lost a child. She could tell me I would survive, but I didn’t believe her. A friend told us of the Compassionate Friends and I spoke about it during a therapy session. Our grief counselor was not supportive. She felt if I were to hear anyone at a meeting say how utterly miserable they still were four, five or even six years after their child’s death, it would only add to my own suffering. But three months into my new life, I made a phone call to the nearest chapter.”
And so, despite our misgivings and the belief that nothing could rescue us, we did each eventually find our way to a meeting. We all came away with the same unforgettable first impression: here were people who were living our very own nightmare and somehow, remarkably, they were surviving.
Rita: “Walking into that room and seeing large numbers of people was shocking. I thought I was completely alone in this. There was comfort in the sheer numbers of people even before anyone said a word. And you know … I was just happy to see they were still alive.”
Carol: “It was one thing to see them alive, it was another to say, ‘Oh my God, they’re still coming.’ But I still went. I had no place else to go.”
Phyllis: “My first impression was seeing everybody dressed and looking normal. I couldn’t believe they were sitting there dressed … that they actually got up and got out.”
Maddy: “Audrey made the most impact on me. I thought I was different because my son just closed his eyes and didn’t wake up and we didn’t know why he was dead. I thought I’d meet other people at the meeting who had a reason for their child’s death. That first night, I learned what compassion was. I heard Audrey’s story of this fifteen-year-old girl and this senseless accident. I went home not thinking of my pain, but thinking of her pain.”
Ariella: “At first you think your pain is worse than anyone else’s. Perhaps it’s because you lost an only child. Maybe your child was killed in an accident or died of an illness. But at the meetings, you learn that no matter the circumstances, parents are never prepared for their child’s death, never prepared to say good-bye. It is a terrible shock no matter when and where and how it happens. There is no comparing who had the most horrific loss … . Each parent’s loss is the worst loss to them and we are all in pain. All our kids lost their futures, no matter how they died.”
Barbara G.: “I thought I had been singled out, punished for some unknown deed, until I walked into a Compassionate Friends’ meeting and saw so many, many people. Could they all have been punished like me? Did they all do something terrible?”
We found that the people at these meetings truly walked the walk and talked the talk.
Phyllis: “I remember seeing a woman walk a certain sad walk, and I thought to myself, ‘I walk like that.’”
We had come to a secure place where we could unburden ourselves of the things we could not say in any other public place. Where else could we speak the unspeakable? Could we expect a civilian not to be shocked if we told them we went to the cemetery and lay down on the ground atop our child’s grave? Could we ask an outsider not to shy away when we said, “No one calls me Mommy, anymore”?
Ariella: “Where else can the parent of an only child ask if they are still a parent if that child has died? When Bob and I lost Michael, we lost our identity. Our future was shattered. Wherever you go and whatever you do in the civilian world, you are constantly exposed to talk of people’s children and grandchildren. There is no place to run and hide. Your feel like an outcast in the world of parents and children.”
Would anyone outside this group want to know what clothing we buried our child in and what type of casket we selected? How could we describe to the uninitiated what it is like to have permanently engraved upon your mind’s eye, as if etched there in acid, that moment when you looked upon your child’s face for the very last time on this earth?
When we are in the company of other bereaved parents, these are the words that spill from us, providing some kind of a catharsis. We repeat them over and over again as if they were a mantra. Verbalizing such thoughts keeps our children alive in some way. It is as if we are spending the evening with them.
Maddy: “At the meetings, our children come first. It’s the only place left where they do. It’s like going to the PTA for our kids.”
Barbara G.: “When we are with each other, we talk about our children naturally and lightly. When we’re out with the rest of the world, people hesitate to
bring up our child’s name. But here I can say how I envy intact families, how I was afraid to love my surviving children, how I had distanced myself from them as a protective measure. It’s a totally nonjudgmental atmosphere.”
Carol: “We get to know each other’s children very well.”
Ariella: “I can tell you all about Lisa, Marc, Neill, Brian and the others in our group; we cherish them all and for us they continue to exist. That’s very important, because as the years go by, people forget about them … or they seem to.”
Bereavement support groups are a place in which we are not embarrassed to say aloud that we have all sought out the help of psychics, something we never even considered before our children died. Whether we believe the words of the psychics or not, we have gone to them seeking some word, some sign, some comfort. None of us is truly willing to admit we believe them, but none of us is brave enough to dismiss them completely, either.
Bereavement support groups act as our buffer when words might indeed harm us. We know we will find shelter there from things we do not choose to hear.
Barbara E.: “We know nothing will be said there that we’ll have to protect ourselves against.”
All too often, people in the outside world say things that are inconsiderate and hurtful. We realize we were guilty of uttering such mindless platitudes ourselves before we were bereaved, just as we now understand that such comments are made as a result of ignorance and innocence. But that does not make it any less difficult to hear them now. Our skins will never be as thick and resilient as they were before.
Rita: “They usually tell us, ‘I couldn’t live through this if it was me.’”
Phyllis: “They say, ‘You’re an inspiration.’ That’s very hard to hear.”
Barbara G.: “And I certainly don’t want to be pitied. At the meetings you are not pitied.”
Rita: “You want people’s understanding. But you hate it when they show any kind of pity. There’s no understanding in pity. It’s just like they’re saying, ‘poor you.’ Are they really saying ‘better you than me’?”
Bereavement group meetings, whether they’re organized by the Compassionate Friends or another support organization, generally follow
a similar format. Meetings are held at houses of worship, libraries, members’ homes, or local VFW halls; we know of one group that meets in a bank. Location matters little.
Meetings usually begin with a round of introductions, during which everybody describes how they lost their child and when.
Phyllis: “Each story you hear at a meeting is horrific, and some parents can’t speak without crying and some do not speak at all.”
There is a need among grieving mothers and fathers to connect with others who lost their children in much the same way.
Rita: “I wanted to talk to people who lost a child in a car accident. I needed sudden death.”
Lorenza: “Because Marc died while fishing, I looked for any mention of a death on the water.”
Ariella: “Barbara and Mike’s son Brian went through a bone-marrow transplant with the same doctor and hospital that Michael had. When they came to a meeting we immediately connected. We could share mutual anguish and frustration with the hospital procedures and what our sons went through.”
Some support groups divide into factions such as those for parents whose child died accidentally, those whose child took his or her own life, those who lost an only child, those who lost a child to sudden death or long illness, or the death of a handicapped child, or even those who lost children several years ago but still have a need to be wrapped in the comforting warm blanket of a support group.

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