Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child (7 page)

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Authors: Ellen Mitchell

BOOK: Beyond Tears: Living After Losing a Child
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Sadly, when our living children needed us the most, we had the least to give. We are cognizant of that now; we wish we were more aware of it then.
As we watched our surviving children go forward with their lives, we could not help but wonder what the future might have held for our dead child.
As for our surviving children, they, too, found moving on to be rough going. It was often difficult for them to speak to us of their lost sibling.
Rita: “Our younger son, Tommy, left the house a lot. He spent time out with friends and he tried to avoid us. When we asked about his feelings, he refused to tell us, saying that he did not want to add any more pain to what we already had.”
Some of us arranged for our surviving children to have counseling, and some of our children found their own form of therapy, seeking out and befriending other young people who had lost a brother or sister or perhaps a parent. At home, they learned to step quietly around us and ruffle no feathers for fear of what might occur.
Barbara G.: “My children walked on eggshells around me … . They still do. I have not had a good fight with my children since Howie died. I often wonder if my kids think I’d fall apart completely if they were to disagree with me.”
In the first chapter, we described how we became fearless in the face of danger. We did not fear death for ourselves, indeed, at times we welcomed the thought. After all, we had already experienced the worst that could possibly happen. It did not occur to us that our children might be experiencing those same horrid emotions … at least not until it was pointed out to us.
Rita: “At one point my son Tommy told me he would go to sleep each night with a switchblade next to his bed. I think he told me that for its shock value. He was crying out for attention. And then exactly one year after his brother died, he totaled my car.”
Despite our initial feeling that we could not be further hurt, no matter what happened, we eventually all began to feel the emergence of more appropriate parental concerns. With the passage of several years, we started to worry again about our surviving children. We knew we were “getting better” as such customary worries returned.
Of course, now such worries are accompanied by the sad fact that we really have no control over our children’s lives. We want to keep them safe; we have learned that we cannot do so. Their lives are not in our hands.
A number of us were greatly comforted by the concern and compassion of our surviving children in the early months after the tragedy.
Of course, much of what they were able to provide depended on their own age and maturity, and whether or not they lived at home with us at the time or were instead in relationships or even marriages of their own.
Barbara and Mike Eisenberg’s daughter flew home from a European trip on learning of her brother’s illness. She was with her parents at her brother’s bedside throughout the entire long ordeal. She shared every glimmer of hope and every terrible letdown with them until he died, and she’s been there for them ever since.
Barbara Goldstein’s eldest son Philip took over the care and nurturing of his youngest brother Eric when their middle brother Howie died. Unasked, Philip stepped in and started taking Eric to ballgames and weekend amusements. He had Eric stay in his apartment at times and in general acted as the parent when his own parents were unable to do so. He wore a beeper should his parents need him or want to reach him quickly.
Barbara G.: “Philip, our older son, said he was determined that our family would go on. We can never adequately express our gratitude for all that he did for us during the early times of our grief. Eric, who was sixteen at the time of Howie’s death, would rush home after school and sift through the mail, taking away anything he thought would upset me further.”
Allegra Colletti was working in California when she learned of her brother Marc’s death. She phoned her parents and kept them on the phone for nearly two hours, trying desperately to comfort them. When she returned to Manhattan, she took it upon herself to console her father. He was already retired and time hung heavily on his hands as he brooded over Marc’s death. Allegra would insist he come into Manhattan rather than let him sit alone at home.
At the time of Jessica’s death, Audrey and Irv Cohen were comforted by the love and wisdom of Deborah, Irv’s daughter from a previous marriage. Debi was already married with children of her own. The fact that she was a half sister, with her own family and extra years of maturity, gave her a perspective different from some of the other siblings described in this book. Her ability to speak easily about Jessica, and her happy faculty for keeping her own children aware that there was an “Aunt Jess,” has been and continues to be a blessing.
Audrey: “Debi made talking about Jess an everyday occurrence. Each of Debi’s children has photos of Jess in their bedrooms. Debi recounts tales of Jess’s silliness or funny incidents. They still call her bedroom in our house, Aunt Jess’s room.”
For the sake of our other children, we overcame enormous trepidation to cope with social events that loomed large in those early months. Several of us went ahead with engagement parties and weddings that had been planned months before the unthinkable occurred. We could not slight our surviving daughters and sons who had planned to marry before their siblings died.
Phyllis: “Friends and family watched and seemed to take their cues from Mel and me as we walked our son Barry down the aisle several months after Andrea died. She and her sister Abbe were supposed to be bridesmaids. It was a very solemn time. The rabbi, knowing the situation, said little other than the necessary vows. Our son chose not to include Andrea’s name in a prayer at the ceremony, which was very difficult for Mel and me. We were very careful of how we took the family photos. We did not have a reception line. Abbe did walk down the aisle on the arm of an usher, but she collapsed after the ceremony. We all performed like robots, but we needed to be there for our son.”
Carol: “I have two other daughters. My older daughter Shari was married and had three children already when Lisa died. They were a great comfort to me. But Wendy, our younger daughter, had a wedding coming up three months after. She’d gone through a lot when Lisa was sick; she’d come down from college to sit with us in the hospital. She was terrific; I felt I owed her that wedding. And at the wedding, my husband Don and I got up and danced. It was kind of a signal to all the guests that it was alright to dance.”
Barbara G.: “I watched with pride and thought of Howard as Philip got married four years after Howie’s death. Just before Eric walked down the aisle as best man, I ran over to him and whispered in his ear, ‘Walk slowly, Howie is walking in front of you.’ Later, when Eric got married, I repeated the same words to Philip, who turned and assured me that Howie was walking beside him.”
Several of our children were already married at the time of their deaths. None left children behind, but they did leave a husband, a wife or girlfriends. For the most part our relationships with these people has been amazingly positive, much more so than we would have imagined
possible. None of us has gone out of our way to encourage closeness with these people, each of us feeling that they are young and must get on with their lives. So, any ties that have continued have been not of our making, but of theirs. They have helped to lighten our burden. We know that their lives, too, were deeply affected by the loss.
Ariella: “Michael had a girlfriend who keeps in touch with us. She was with him for three years. Since his death she’s been engaged twice. Life has been hard for her. She tells us, ‘It should have been Michael. You should have been my in-laws. ’ She always sends Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards and signs them from Lauren and Michael. It means a lot to us.”
Carol: “It was very painful at the beginning for us to see Lisa’s husband Craig. He would come to family functions. I wanted him there but it was difficult. Where was she?”
Lorenza: “Kate, Marc’s wife, remarried and has several children. She never forgets an occasion … Father’s Day, Mother’s Day. She sends flowers on Memorial Day to be placed on Marc’s grave. On the anniversary of his death, she and her family come to New York from Massachusetts. They go to the cemetery with Marc’s friends and then everybody comes to our house for lunch. Her husband comes along. I think he is a very special man.”
In one case, a relationship was severed not by the girlfriend but by her parents. Brian Eisenberg’s girlfriend left college to be at his bedside throughout his illness. She stayed with Barbara and Michael for six weeks following Brian’s death. When it was time for Brian’s gravestone to be unveiled, the young woman’s father phoned to say she would not be coming, that it was time to break the connection. His concern for his daughter’s welfare is quite understandable.
And then, of course, there are our parents. Their suffering is double-fold. They grieve not only for the grandchild they lost, but they grieve for us, their own children whom they see in torment.
Rita: “Our parents cried for their children and their grandchildren.”
As in all families, our relationships with our own parents differ from case to case. Some of us, frankly, found our parents to be a burden. More than one of us had to contend with a mother who seemed to feel that
the loss of her grandchild was “all about her,” that it weighed more heavily upon her than on anyone else.
Others of us enjoy an enormous closeness with our parents and have found them to be a great solace during our ordeal.
Barbara E.: “My parents were there for Mike and me and Brian, both physically and emotionally. They flew up from Florida and were with Brian almost every day.”
Barbara G.: “In a book I prepared about Howie for an unveiling we never had, I thanked my parents for giving me life not once but twice. They suffered along with me, and with the wisdom of their years looked ahead to the future and tried to keep me alive to enjoy whatever lay ahead. I did not always agree with them as they spoke of grandchildren and graduations to look forward to … but they were there for me and for their other grandsons.”
Lorenza: “Both my husband and I had parents at the time. They felt the loss tremendously. Marc was very close with his grandparents. Thank God my father had Alzheimer’s disease. I was praying I would get Alzheimer’s at the time. I would cry and my father would ask me why I was crying. He remembered Marc only as ‘that nice boy that lived over there.’”
Maddy: “My mother was sitting next to Neill on the bus. They both fell asleep. She woke up and he didn’t. She went into shock. She feels more guilt than the rest of us.”
Ariella: “My father died of a broken heart. He kept saying it should have been him and not Michael. When my father was in intensive care, he looked up at the ceiling and he said he saw Michael; he said that Michael looked good.”
The death of our children has had its affect on our grandchildren, even those who were not yet born at the time.
Barbara G.: “We wanted a grandson to be named after Howie, but our eldest son Philip just could not do it. Within a short time, however, the little one … with whom I am totally besotted … developed a stubborn streak. We see a touch of his Uncle Howie there.”
Phyllis: “When my daughter became a mother, she had a hard time letting sher children go on field trips or ride in a car with anyone else. She would accompany them. She felt uncomfortable when they left for school on the bus.”
Carol: “Lisa died on a respirator and when her sister had her first child she named her after Lisa. Hannah Lisa was born six weeks early and so she came in on a respirator. I went into the nursery and when I touched her hand and said her name she responded to me right away … like she knew me, like Lisa was inside her. And she looks so much like Lisa.”
Phyllis: “Two of my granddaughters are named after Andrea. That was very hard. When my first granddaughter was born four years after Andrea died, I couldn’t go to the hospital, I was like lead. I somehow thought I was going to go and see Andrea. Months later, when my second granddaughter was born, I went and it was easier.”
Our children’s aunts and uncles and the parents of their own close friends will always be affected by what happened. They will, for instance, forever panic when a daughter or son is late in arriving home. Death causes a ripple effect far beyond our own households.
Rita’s brother Frank Rizzello chanced upon the accident scene in which Michael was killed. He saw the high-intensity lights and made a turnaround, drawn for reasons beyond his understanding to the death scene. He did not realize that he was witnessing the final moments in the life of his beloved nephew, but he stood and prayed as Michael’s body was extricated from the wreckage. Later he would write a poem about it, part of which is excerpted here:
I prayed for you and stayed by you
Not knowing who you were.
Destiny and eternal love led me to you in your final hour
And I could not leave you.
You were not alone, Michael,
You were not alone.
Frank Rizzello

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