The Taking of Life

     I have had it with what I see as society disintegrating all around us.  Everyday there is news of another mass shooting or stabbing, many in schools.  And just yesterday in a U.S. high school, a girl was stabbed to death because she refused to be a young man's prom date.  She already had a date.  For those of us who have lost children, especially in a violent way, these stories become more and more painful as we truly understand the heartache incurred with these losses of lives.

     I ask myself is it evil or mental illness or social media or violence in the pop culture or all of the above which contribute to these tragedies.  Are weapons too readily available?  Do schools need better security procedures?  Is care for mental illness inadequate and too difficult to obtain?  Are we bombarded with violence in books, movies, video games, music, and TV.  Has social media contributed to mass depersonalization of the individual?  Can we no longer think, relate or communicate on a personal and empathetic level? Has drug addiction overrun our society so people no longer feel or know what they are doing?  Has family life totally dissolved? And finally, have we turned too far away from God, prayer and organized religion in our modern and very secularized culture?  Have we simply forgotten there is a moral right and a wrong?

     What makes any one person think he has the right to take the life of another?  I think of a recent case where three teenagers were "bored" and decided to kill someone for something to do.  They piled in a car, and drive-by style, shot a promising college athlete thereby ending a bright future.  How detached is that kind of behavior or is it just plain evil?  These young men can express all the apologies and regrets they want, but that can never match the pain of the parents, family and friends of this murdered young man.  Even their punishment, cannot take away the pain of loved ones.

     I my humble opinion, we need to first strengthen and re-integrate the nuclear family unit.  It is better for children to have two parents and to be born in a loving stable home and not to a teenage mother.  Marriage needs to become important again.  Now, things are backwards.  Couples have children, buy a house, then "think" about getting married.  We have lost sight of the fact that it should be the reverse. Or, worse yet, there is no wedding at all.  Just rolling from one relationship to another with children as movable chess pieces in a game of life.

     This return to stability and morality in the family should bring us back to God and regular attendance in a place of worship.  I truly believe we need recognize there is a higher power to whom we have to give an accounting for our lives.  We seem to have lost sight of that and children are not being taught this spiritual accountability.

     Next, the mental health system in the U.S. needs to be re-structured.  There needs to be more care available, hospitalizations easier to access, more inpatient beds for the severely mentally ill, and better identification and intervention for high risks individuals in our schools and work places.

     Finally the scourge of drug addiction must be addressed.  In many cases, outpatient treatment or 28 days of inpatient treatment is just not adequate for someone who has adopted that lifestyle and has reached rock bottom in addiction.  It is my belief that in most cases, addiction is an outer symptom of an inner pain which must be addressed to cure the addiction.  The amount of coverage allowed by insurance is simply just not sufficient to address all the issues.  Until this is recognized and willing to be dealt with, addiction will retain it's hold on far too many people at an even greater cost to our society than treating it adequately.  Treating addiction takes far longer than just detox.

     These are my ideas.  Perhaps you have others or you don't agree.  I would like to hear what you think.  You may ask, "What can I do?"  I would start by looking in the mirror and asking where you stand with your family and your God.  Maybe you can't do this right now because of the pain of your grief, but, your family wants and needs you.  And God loves you, believes in you and is there to heal you.

   

Peace at this Holy Time

I wish all of you peace at Easter and Passover.  May you be able to spend time with family and friends for the love and support of each other.

I am sorry you have not heard from me recently.  I have been sick with a serious respiratory infection followed by a mild form of Gullain Barre Syndrome.  I am thankful I am not more seriously ill and still able to get around.  Mainly I have been extremely fatigued and feeling very weak.  I seem to have improved a little in the last few days.  I am looking forward to feeling better in a couple of weeks and getting back to writing.

You have been in my thoughts and prayers.  May God keep you in his care.

Find Your Rose

                                                       Just remember in the winter
                                                       Far beneath the bitter snows
                                                       Lies the seed, that with the suns love
                                                       In the spring becomes the rose

                                                                                            Janis Joplin, The Rose

     I have had enough of winter, literally and figuratively.  Grief definitely feels like the winter of your life.  Endless, joyless, dreary days with little or nothing to look forward to.

     I am feeling, lately, like not doing much.  I know it is related to needing to reach deep down within myself to renew the spark of forgiveness for those involved in the death of my son.  In times of stress, things have a way of re-surfacing even when you have worked hard on dealing with them.  The inclement weather, with its forced isolation of being housebound, has not been good.

     I am in an angry mood, but when I acknowledge it, I eat less.  I need to start punching pillows again and pray for healing.  Recently my priest at mass spoke about forgiveness.  He mentioned a quote he found on Facebook about holding onto anger and grudges.  The quote likened this to, Drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.  So who gets hurt with anger and other negative emotions?

     True, you and I can feel justified for being angry at the factors and individuals involved with the deaths of our children.  So it becomes a question of which seed to feed, anger or forgiveness.  At some point you and I have to make this choice.  And probably more than once or even daily.

     I know I am not dead inside.  Neither are you because you are reading this.   You are seeking a way to bring some peace and healing into your life.  You and I do have the spark of life that can light the way to the seed of personal growth, our roses.  The rose may be covered with the tears of the bitter snows of loss, but it can bloom again.  A new spring is possible.

     I am proposing an exercise to deal with anger and negative emotions.  If you have no physical limitations to doing so, find something you can punch--- a pillow, sofa, or punching bag, or something you will not injure yourself on.  Now, name your emotion and all the factors or persons you feel negatively about and punch them one by one.  When you feel tired or spent, stop.  Take some deep breaths, cry, laugh, whatever.

    Now, stand and take three deep breaths.  Hold your hands up, palms out.  Start making counter-clock wise motions with your hands.  Each time your hands move away from your body, exhale and blow out all negativity.  Do that five times.  Next, make clock-wise motions with your hands.  Each time you bring your hands close to your body,  breathe in and bring peace and healing to your body. Repeat five times.  Then hold your hands over your head and stretch and deep breathe.  Try to hold onto that feeling of peace.

     Final step, do something to nurture yourself.  It can be a cup of tea, a bath, reading a favorite passage from the bible, listening to music, prayer or meditation or get a massage.  You need this to get through this journey.  It is necessity, not a reason for a guilt trip.

     Practice feeding the seed of hope and love, not negativity.  That seed, with care and love, can bloom into your rose of renewed life.

 



 

Changing Focus

     My mental outlook has improved from my last blog.  I think, maybe, I was feeling some post-holiday blues and some Valentine's Day dread.  Anyway,  I decided I had to shift gears.  I had to focus on what I have in my life.  Not what I have lost.

     How did I do that?  I used an anger release technique by punching my bed pillows vigorously and repeatedly for several minutes.  One by one, I visualized punching each person I believed had harmed my son, Chris, and each person who denied him justice.  It was very helpful in releasing my emotions.

     I woke up the next morning and realized it takes energy to stay in an angry and negative place.  It seemed better to remember the good things in my life.  My separation from my son and husband, unfair as it seems to me, is temporary.  I believe, someday, we will be re-united in eternity.  Just not yet.

     With prayer, I came to understand how wonderful loving, kind and supportive friends and family have been to me.  It was very good to celebrate Super Bowl Sunday and a little birthday dinner with my husband's family.    I did have to take some deep breaths and put my game face on in more ways than one.  I struggled to go from the negative place to the positive place.

     Before going out, I prayed for inner peace.  I prayed, too, my smile would reach my heart and eyes.  I know in my heart my son, Chris, and husband, Fred, had looked down on our celebration.  I love my husband's family dearly.  They have not forgotten me, Chris or Fred.  For this, I am very grateful and blessed.  Also, my best friend and her family called me to check up on me as I know they were concerned about me because of the previous blog.  I felt very appreciative and touched.

     I reminded myself I am not alone.  I am grateful I can talk about Fred and Chris to friends and family.  At first, they were uncomfortable, but I persisted.  Eventually they came to enjoy my memories and interject their own.  We do indeed have many happy memories and are forging ahead to make new ones.

     We are all fragile in our bereavement, but that does not mean we do not possess inner strength.  Some days, it may be hard to tap into this strength or recognize it at all.  If you are reading this after the death of your child, you do indeed have inner strength.  Please take a moment to validate yourself.

     It may help to sit in a comfortable chair, deep breathe, relax and clear your head.  Concentrate and say to yourself over and over, "I am strong.  I can get through this."  I did this exercise before going out to the party.  If you do this, have courage and explore any thoughts that come up.  These thoughts are something you may want to discuss with a grief counselor  or your support group.  If you don't have either, I strongly urge you to get connected to one and/or the other.  Grief is a journey very difficult to go alone.

     It takes energy and work, as well, to be positive.  But to me, this is energy well spent rather than flailing around in a pit of negativity endlessly.  

Waiting: Life on Hold after Loss

    I wait for answers, for change, for what I don't know.  The concept of  waiting struck really close to home for me with a Hallmark TV Channel movie this evening.  It was about a woman in World War II who said goodbye to her husband on Valentine's Day, their  wedding anniversary.  He never returned from the war.  MIA.  Every year on Valentine's Day she would return to the train station and wait.  She had gone on with her life, but yet she waited.  As do we all in a way, maybe not consciously.  But, we wait.

     I wish I had a place to wait.  To wait for my son, Chris, to return.  To hear, "Hey Mom," again.  To wake up from a nightmare.  To come out of this parallel universe where parents have lost kids to the regular world of regular parents.  To wait for our time to re-join our children in eternity.  To wait to come out of jumping over the chasm of our world of loss to everyday life.  To wait not to be fragile, but to be a tower of strength.

     It is very hard, each day or some days.  But very hard.  A struggle.  Days or times of grief can come out of the blue.  I sobbed at the beginning of this movie.  I realized how much I miss my Chris.  How hard life is without him and his father.  I know I fill up my pain with food.  Things are made much worse as I have so many regrets about the circumstances surrounding Chris' death.  I came home to find Chris gone.  A note was on the kitchen table saying he had fed the dog.  Nothing else.

     He died alone in a small town by himself in the back yard of the young woman I believe shot him.  He was six hours away from home.  In what I regard as a rotten wasteland of a place in western Pennsylvania.  At times, I am tortured by thoughts and images of what his final moments must have been like.  Did he choke or gasp for air or cry out in pain?  Instead of comforting him this young woman along with someone else cleaned up the shooting scene so a proper investigation could not be done.  She was not mentally ill, but evil.  The product of an evil, corrupt politician father.

     Why do I wait and he was spared?  Why does it seem evil triumphs over good so many times.  Especially in backwater places with inept, inexperienced and corrupt police officials and medical examiners who have forgotten they were sworn to uphold the law.

     Now I am alone to wait for my life to feel better.  The young woman teaches elementary school for her local school system.  A job no doubt arranged by her father who kept all her actions quiet, especially after the state fired her for her conduct.  I wouldn't want her teaching my young child or grandchild.      

     There was never any phone call from the hospital, no call from the local township police, no call from her or her parents.  My local police called the medical examiner who told me not to blame myself and do my best to get over it.  Really.  I wonder if that is what he would do or her father if one of their children got shot and killed.

     Tonight I feel no acceptance or forgiveness.  Only anger and hatred.  God is supposed to see everything.  Perhaps what goes around comes around.  Yes, at this moment, I hate this young woman, her parents, those police and that medical examiner.  I hate the availability of guns.

     With almost daily school shootings, how many more parents will go through what I have been through?  I feel no compassion for this young woman or her parents tonight.  Only for you who have lost your children.

     Yet I know I have to pull it together and wait for a better day tomorrow.  I better pound some pillows and wait for exhaustion to overtake me and anger and hatred to leave me.  More waiting.  

Small Steps Yield Big Gains

     We are now almost at the end of January 2014.  I would like to propose thinking about what the year may hold for you.

     I have set some goals for myself mostly related to my health.  This is important for you, also.  How have you been doing?  Do you eat regularly and try for balance in your food choices?  Do you go to bed at night or stay up and watch TV all night?  Are you sleeping all day?  Maybe checking in with your doctor wouldn't hurt.  You might not have the energy to get there, but go.  I did.  My doctor told me after I had lost both my son and husband, he didn't care how I had to drag myself there, he wanted me in grief counseling every week.  He was right.  I needed it and I went.  I had to.  I had lost my will to live.

     I have joined a weight management support group because my recent weight gain and eating patterns are of great concern to me.  I am not suggesting you try to lose weight now, but try to have a regular meal patterns and eat healthier.  I know I need comfort food, but am trying to avoid junk food bingeing.

     I hope to take a religious tour in September 2014 to Fatima and Lourdes.  I am looking to find more peace-- to put to rest any anger, guilt, resentments or hatred.  If there is somewhere that brings you peace, then I urge you to do what you have to do to get there.

     Writing The Amberella Tales has been very beneficial to me because of including my son in the first and second books and dedicating the first book to him.  I would like to continue the series and possibly publish my third book this year.  But I have to push myself.

     I want you to think how you can move forward even just inches in 2014.  Depending on where you are in your grief journey, the smallest task may seem like climbing a mountain.  And it's okay to feel that way.  But try with something very simple to begin re-claiming your life.  Shower & get dressed everyday, or make your bed or take a walk around the block.  Clean up the house for 15 minutes or do one load of laundry each day.  Anything which gives you some small sense of accomplishment.

     In the two years after Chris died,  I had piles and piles of laundry.  I even went out and bought an extra hamper.  I filled that, too, then piled more laundry on top of it.  I'm not even sure what it all was.  Finally, I had to splurge to get a laundry service to pick it all up, wash it and deliver it back.  I was able to manage to sort it and put it away once the task wasn't so overwhelming.  This was in addition to dishes stacking up in the sink and stuff all over the family room floor.  I know what it can be like when you are trying to survive, but not really living.

     I also had to go back to work and for a short time visit my husband daily in the nursing home.  And you have your obligations, too.  There is work, children, maybe elderly parents.  I know it all makes you collapse and cry.  You have to ask for help or get a cleaning and even laundry service, and order groceries online and have them delivered.  Otherwise, you will feel stressed, guilty and overwhelmed at not being able to get everything done.  The REALITY is you are GRIEVING and CANNOT EXPECT to get it all done.  If you are tending to your personal hygiene, getting to work, caring for other children or grandchildren and getting something to eat together, you are doing super.   If you are at home, pick one thing that bothers you the most and get it done everyday.  You can do it.  It's not easy, but you can do it.

     If you are able to take small steps to start this grieving journey, you will begin to feel better.  Be patient with and good to yourself.  When you start to feel better, you may want to consider something creative that might commemorate you child or something to incorporate your memories.  Some time may have to pass before you are able to do this.

    You can keep a journal which lets you get your feelings out and can help you see your progress.  There is painting, scrapbooking, gardening, quilting and needlework.  Be bold.  Resurrect a dormant skill or try new ones.  Any project in which you memorialize your child will bring you peace.   If you are able, you can volunteer for a cause related to your child's death or establish a fund-raising event for a scholarship or a charity.

     Start with tiny, daily steps.  You can move forward from there to re-claim your life.  It will not be the same, but you can move on from just surviving.  Feel free to comment and let me know how you are doing and what works for you.    


   

Visiting the Cemetery

    The holidays always bring the question of visiting the cemetery with something special when you may be missing your child the most.   The cemetery has never been easy for me, but the last few years I have come to peace with my visits.  Initially I would be very depressed for days after going. Yet I wanted to go and just prepared myself for feeling bad. Then gradually, I saw it as a time for peace and a quiet place to talk to Chris and my husband, Fred, too.

     If you are wrestling with the decision of whether or when to go or are dreading going, perhaps I can help you with my own experience.
       
      1)  It may be easier to go with another friend or relative.  I usually go alone, but this year, I may ask a good friend to go with me.  I am feeling the need for support this year.  I have been under more stress than usual and not feeling well.  Sit down and think about your needs and who and what would support you the most.

       2)  After going to the cemetery, decide if you want some quiet time, need to go to church or perhaps you would rather be distracted by being with other people.  The choice is yours.  Do not feel or pressured to do something.  If you must attend a social engagement, then schedule the cemetery for a time in which you will not be obligated to do something afterwards if you want quiet.
   
       3)  It is okay not to go to the cemetery if you are dreading going or become ill or very distraught by visiting your child's gravesite.  You can sit in quiet and visit with your child anywhere.  It is NOT necessary to go to the gravesite.  You can buy a special plant, plant a special live commemorative tree, bake a special dessert, have a special toast or a commemorative meal at home or in a restaurant.

     Finally, let me leave you with the words of the poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye:

                    Do not stand by my grave and weep
                    I am not there, I do not sleep
                    I am a thousand winds that blow
                    I am the diamond's gift of snow
                    I am the sunlight on ripened grain
                    I am autumn's gentle rain
                    When you awaken in the morning's hush
                    I am the swift uplifting rush
                    Of quiet birds in circled flight
                    I am the soft stars that shine at night
                    Do not stand at my grave and cry

                          I am not there
                          I did not die.

     Our children's spirits go on and we with them.

Rosemarie