Tag Archives: Newtown

The thing about grief . . . Part 9

2 Replies

random acts of kindness

This will be the final installment, at least for a while, in the grief series.  I have shared that, indeed, you will laugh again even as you encounter the “firsts” without your loved one as well as some of the ugly sides of grief.  But today’s thoughts come from a happier place known only by select handful.

Throughout this journey even though some days it feels contrary to reality, we have never been alone.  The obvious reason is that our precious boy, Reed, didn’t die alone.  He was one of four beautiful children killed that frigid February day.  But that isn’t the isolation about which I am referring.  While existing, exhausted with a big hole in your heart, you feel as if there is no one who cares or understands what you are going through.  Definitely, not true!

So many came alongside our family and reached out in big and small ways.  They gave gifts of  forgotten stories, meals, and hugs.  Family, friends, and strangers have come to our home and served us, offering help when the tasks were just too much for us.  There have been e-mails, texts, letters, cards, and posts of encouragement.  All of these have become precious pearls of memories for each of us.

Each token was worth more the item itself as it was the embodiment of hope. Too many to enumerate have become some of my most loved things.  Of all the gifts that given, there is one that sticks out as quite possible the most unique.  A stranger, whom we have never met, gave sacrificially every day for two years, in what has become one of the greatest gifts of my life.

Shortly after arriving home from the hospital there was a small notecard outlining her covenant with our family.  In the handwritten card, she explained, years before, she had lost several family members in a tragic accident.  She knew the isolation, despair, and challenges of grief intimately.  Our earthly angel also knew the power of prayer – as that had pulled her through the darkest days.  (I have to imagine that she too had a wonderfully supportive community.)  Her covenant with our family was to pray for us every day for two years.  She also must have experienced the same phenomena that the first year was hard, but that the second year was harder. I don’t really know her reasoning but she prayed us right on through that second year as well.

We didn’t hear from her daily, but every once in a while came a letter with a reminder that she was living up to her end of the arrangement.  Her notes would arrive, and once again, we were bolstered by the devotion and commitment of a complete stranger.  Because she gave this gift without the need for recognition, I am choosing to keep her identity private.

Her love and random daily act of kindness have been in my heart ever since the first note arrived.  Her thoughtfulness was the first thing that popped into my mind when I first learned of the #26acts movement started by newswoman, Ann Curry as a way to honor the victims of the Newtown tragedy.  It took me a long time to be able to even look at those sweet babies and brave adults, but when I did I knew Ann was right.  One great way to help a community heal from such evil was to be purposeful in being kind and thoughtful.

My family continues our philosophy of service by quietly completing our own 26 acts.  In a strange turn of events, we were, once again, the recipients of someone’s kindness when I received a glitter-filled handwritten Bible verse from an anonymous encourager. It made my day! While I have been thinking of others, someone was thinking of us.

It was at that moment that I knew how God wanted me to end this series of writings.  The truth is that there are many people who tell you in the early days of grief that if you need anything just call.  Well intentioned, yes. Practical, not really! Honestly, I didn’t even know my own name in those mind-numbing first moments.  Yet, I still had to be a mom and a wife, running a grieving household while taking care of injured children.  At that point, we could have eaten pocket lint, and it would have been fine by me.  I literally had no energy left to think of calling anyone, let alone to ask for help.

To truly help someone who is grieving, don’t wait for them to call you.  Call them and ask if you can watch the kids, get the groceries, walk the dog. Get creative! It is like the old Nike ads. Do Something! Anything that is a gift of time and service is usually helpful.  But if you can’t, for whatever reason, give chunks of your time, can you send a note of encouragement?  Can you pray? Even better, can you send those notes timed to first events the grieving family might be experiencing? Can you make a long term commitment to loving and encouraging someone who really needs your help? If experience is any teacher, the giver is the one far more blessed than the receiver -even when it comes to grieving folks.

What an incredible world it would be if every grieving family had an earthly angel just like us! I, for one, will be following her example, and that alone will be a blessing.

 

The thing about grief . . . Part 2

Leave a reply

wordIt has taken me a long time to write this blog for a myriad of reasons. The largest one is the bare “nakedness” of sharing something that is difficult to admit even to myself. But in the end, I feel that God wants me to share because somehow by talking about my challenges someone somewhere might be helped. The things (both good and bad) that I am sharing in this series come from hidden places that very few know.

Losing someone is hard. Grieving that loss is even harder.

Grief is messy work. So messy that at times, things just don’t make sense. One of my challenges is the inability to retrieve words when I am speaking. It has slowly gotten better over time, but at one point it was so bad that I spoke to my doctor about the possibility of early onset Alzheimer’s. When I slow down and really think, I can retrieve the word, but sometimes it just doesn’t come.
To help you to understand, it is often a common ordinary word like refrigerator. I might want to ask my kids to get something from there, but no matter how hard I try I cannot get that word out. Eventually I settle for a sort of word version of charades, akin to “Can you get the hamburger out of the thing – you know – the thing that keeps food cold?”

I have been reassured that I do not have Alzheimer’s disease. I simply have a word retrieval issue as a result of grief brain. It has gotten better over time, but I do still encounter it. I would liken it to one of those pesky August flies in Minnesota that you just can’t seem to swat. For someone who uses her words professionally, this lapse is frustrating, at best. My challenge isn’t something I can just make better. It is completely involuntary.

The Monday following the Newtown tragedy found me travelling with students that I help coach. I was doing my normal coaching duties when suddenly the entire page looked like hieroglyphics. Numbers and symbols that I adore – became gibberish. I was still so emotionally raw that I became teary-eyed and explained to the fellow coaches that my brain was trapped right back to February 19.
Instead of treating me in all the ways my imagination thought possible, one cried, one jumped in to do my job, one hugged me, and one reassured me that I was in a safe place and that he was praying for me. It was a good reminder to me that being truthful was sincerely better than attempting a façade of sunshine and fields of daisies. Instead of holding inside my messy bucket of grief, it was okay to let others help me carry the load. They couldn’t walk through my brain, but they could hold my hand and guide me. For that I am eternally thankful.

The thing about grief . . . Part 1

Leave a reply
Drawing Copyrighted property of Reed's Run

Drawing Copyrighted property of Reed’s Run

There was a momentary pause in my writings in December.  I had originally intended to write one more blog in “The Long Road Home” series.  Then came December 14, 2012. At our house it was Clo’s 8th birthday, but for the rest of the world it will be remembered as the day that beautiful souls entered into heaven as a result of the Newtown tragedy.

Around lunchtime, I learned of a school shooting via text message. Thankfully, I didn’t learn any real details until well into the evening.  For my birthday girl’s sake, I am glad that I didn’t.  The first thing I learned was parents were waiting at a local fire hall waiting for word about their sweet babies.

Those words were all it took to push a button on a trap door in my living room floor that led to an avalanche of grief.  No matter how tightly I gripped and clawed to the edge of reality, I was sucked into a vortex of emotions.  Instantaneously, I was transported back to the night of my darkest nightmare when I was the last mom left in the school’s Media Center on February 19, 2008 – waiting, waiting, prayerfully waiting to find out where Reed was.

I collapsed into the nearest chair and sobbed.  I bawled for Reed, (and for Jesse, Emilee, and Hunter), for the dreams gone, for the children lost at Newtown, but mostly my heart ached for those parents still awaiting word.  This is one cup that I desperately wished had passed me, but sadly, I knew what is was like to walk in those parents shoes.

That trap door to my emotions spiraled out of control.  For days I was locked inside an emotional coma. I didn’t eat, sleep, or do anything well.  If I caught a glimpse on television or internet, I sank deeper into the bottomless pit of grief. Caught in the rip current and frantically swimming parallel to the shore of my life, I wasn’t getting out of it.  Inevitably, I unplugged – literally and figuratively.

Eventually, I did have to reconnect, and when I did I discovered several e-mails affirming that I wasn’t going crazy.  All were from trusted grief professionals providing comfort with the same message.  When challenged with something as senseless as losing a child in an unforeseen way, the brain tends to fracture all the emotions at the time of tragedy, hiding them in the deepest, darkest recesses of gray matter.  It is a coping mechanism.  All seems fine and then, (WHAM!), out of nowhere a switch flips – which is like your brain playing a colossal game of Hide-N-Seek – finding that splintered memory.

The messages were soothing, yes, helping me to find my footing again. But for the record, I hate that my brain still has slivers that I am inevitably going to encounter someday.  I hate that for someone who usually remains composed and logical, that grief, at times, is bigger than rational thinking and even normal body rhythms. Disheartened, I know there will always be another tragedy, because after all this isn’t heaven.

During the deepest part of my emotional coma, my husband found me one day – crying and rocking, rocking and crying.  I spoke about how I wanted to rush out to Connecticut just to rock and cry with the parents who babies hands they no longer held. I blathered on about the why and the how, when his gentle hand rested on my own.  In his own grief, he pleaded with me to stop trying to make sense of the senseless.

That’s when it really penetrated my heart (and my brain) that the place I needed to be wasn’t relying on myself or standing on my feet.  The place of healing was on my knees, asking God to fill up the hurt places in my heart and soul as well as in the hearts of anyone else, anywhere in the world, touched by tragedy.  Slowly over the coming days, the fog lifted, and I swam out of that rip current of dark grief.  Battle worn and weary, I knew that my prayers were answered.  I still don’t like my battle scars proclaiming “how I got here”, but I know my journey has created in me a new heart – one that honestly knows that I – without God – wouldn’t have survived any of it.