Your child has died. You feel everything from anger to hopeless and everything in between. You don’t want to get out of bed. You don’t want to eat. You don’t want to engage with people. Yet everyone tells you that you will feel better one day. Better than what you think.
Better is defined as partially or fully recovered from illness, injury or mental stress. But this injury goes right down to your soul. How can you even partially recover from that?
The idea of "better" seems almost an insult to your immense loss. Healing, in your mind, means forgetting your child. The weight of your grief consumes you. Your pain and sorrow are so deep that words can scarcely describe them. Yet, people tell you it will get better.
I think in our world of child loss; we must redefine better. We will never recover from the loss of our child. It’s just not possible. What we do is find a new way to exist with our grief. We live to honor our child's memory. We seek out pockets of peace wherever we can find them.
Eventually, we can look at pictures of our children and not break down sobbing. We can talk about memories of our child and not have it take our breath away. We notice we don't cry every day. We start to understand that better doesn't mean the absence of pain, but rather the ability to carry on in spite of it. So, what better really is, is a journey to learning to coexist with our grief that will forever be a part of us. We learn to embrace the moments of joy that intertwine with our sorrow.
But wait, then we feel guilty for feeling joy, for feeling better. Why should we feel any joy at all? Does this mean I think about my child less? Does this mean that I am forgetting his life and how much I loved him? You can’t help but ask these questions. It just seems like there is no middle ground here. We want to feel better (we think), but then when we do we feel guilty. In time, we find that while our grief remains, it no longer consumes us; rather, it becomes a part of our lives. We find a way to weave it into our story of love, loss and strength.
So, better is not about moving on, but about moving forward holding our child’s memory close and living a life a life that honors their legacy and keeps their spirit alive in our hearts.
Will there be days when you feel like better is beyond your grasp? Oh yea! But there will also be days when you see a sunset and know your child is smiling with you. So, keep going. Keep loving and remembering and grieving. And keep getting better. Just remember it’s all a part of the journey and better is how you define it.
Lynn
Living With Child Loss
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