I continue to stagger through the fog of grief. I am literally lost. I am scared I will never find my way. I am longing for my son more with every passing day. The pain and sadness burns like acid on the skin eating away what is left of my heart and soul. I have no energy to explain...maybe the article below by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore will give insight.
So, what is the real story- the one I wish Hollywood would tell- so the non-bereaved could really experience the truth about grief after the death of a child?
- I wish they would tell the story of how every single cell in our body hurts. Literally, it hurts from tip of our toes to the ends of our hair. The pain is indescribably physical and as merciless as the Mayan heart sacrifices of its helpless victims.
- I wish they would tell how difficult even basic bodily functions are: drinking becomes work as our throat is constantly tight and closes off to water, or food, or oxygen, or sustenance. Or how we are unable to carry groceries or children or the sadness in our arms as they ache with the phantom weight of our children. Or how we cannot breathe because of the concrete slabs on our chest, heavy and dense and gray. Or how our legs buckle and we cannot bear to see other children, especially the ones who are their age and with their names walking gleefully with their parents; parents who may or may not take a moment or two for granted but who will tuck them into bed tonight as we lay sobbing, our salty tears saturating the shag carpeting, in our dead child's room.
- I wish they would tell the story of how, on the rare occasion when we do sleep, we awaken in the morning, nearly every morning, wishing we hadn't.
- I wish they would tell the story of how we look in the mirror at our unrecognizable self every day and wonder at the stranger we see.
- I wish they would tell the story of how our primal mourning is most often done alone and that the supernatural sound of this mourning frightens us, like an wild animal being killed and eaten or like the flogging of human flesh or like the torturing of a prisoner or like Satan being cast from G*d's presence.
- I wish they would tell the story of grief's incessant madness: pacing the hallways late at night, the inability to focus on anything, the intolerance of music, or laughing, or expressions of joy, sensitivity to lights and other benign stimuli, racing video tapes that replay in our heads as we wish-for-changed outcomes, the constant self-accusations of blame and responsibility, the unconscious roulette of risk with Death as our challenger.
- I wish they would tell the story of how we are terrorized by insidious thoughts of our other children dying, and we either over-protect to maintain illusory control or under-love to maintain illusory protection from recurrent grief.
- I wish they would tell the story of how this brings us to our knees. On the floor. Face in the dirt. Begging and pleading for a different life. Willing to do anything, anything to turn time back and go through another door. Or how we fantasize about time machines and contemplate self-institutionalization.
- I wish they would tell the story of a pain so deep and so wide that no word in the English language can begin to express it. That no subsequent child, no new job or house, no distraction- no pill- no drug- no G*d- no joy- no self-induced suffering is sufficient to fill the chasm of the loss.
- I wish they would tell the story of how we pray, even in the absence of a belief in a Creator- we pray, that the suffering would end, by any means.
-I wish they would tell the story of how well-meaning others cause us to recoil with their platitudes and mindless remarks about G*d's will and His garden, the one which needs tending, and something idiotic about making lemonade.
- I wish they would tell the story of how this mother and that mother and this father and that father would have given their life in a moment to save their child, and that we continue to negotiate that with a G*d in whom we may or may not believe for months or even years.
- I wish they would tell the story of how life goes on but that everything has changed, and that we have died in a sense, and must choose to be reborn.
- Mostly, I wish that they would tell the story of a bittersweet survival that does not include a fallacious or contrived "end" to the grief after a prescribed six months. This is not reality for most of us. Yes, I wish they would tell a true story of the anguish absent the "happy" ending. Not that we, at some point, aren't capable of pure love and joy and contentment. In fact, having really "looked into the eyes of such sorrow" is the only way to such pure joy, as Gibran says. But there is no bypassing the tortures of child death, it's effects perennial and relentless for much longer than the unsuspecting world believes.
And there is so much more I wish they would tell.
I wish they would tell the story because I wish others knew. Certainly, if the others knew, they would have to be kinder, more compassionate, more loving to bereaved parents. Wouldn't they?
Posted on Facebook by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore
