The Way Through

A friend shared this poem with me. It was contained a “The Writer’s Almanac” edition, which you can find by clicking here.

I love the imagery and the thought that we don’t have to be wise. We can simply live.

Here is the poem…

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

by Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.

Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.

You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

“Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,” by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. © Word Press, 2005.

“Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,” by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. © Word Press, 2005.

Although her graphic novel about her son Billy, whom she lost to illness when he was four, will not yet be published in the U.S., you can read Nicola Strateen’s story here.

Her story is worth a read.

I wish I’d been keeping a journal since Stephanie died. I suppose I do have some of it written in my blogs and some of it in my journals, but mostly the pain was so grievous that I couldn’t put it into words. I want to survive it and tell my story, but it’s still very hard.

Peace – D

His parents grieve, but they are making a difference every day at the Matthew Shepard Foundation and with the Matthew Shepard Act. I salute their bravery in dealing with this so publicly and so consistently, despite their loss.

http://www.matthewshepard.org/

Lately I find that I’m becoming a bit of a workaholic. Some of that is certainly due to “getting my life back” — I’m in graduate school and work full-time. But I wonder if some of it is also due to my needing to make some meaning out of my daughter’s death. The harder I work, the better I feel, and the more I start to think that this is the way it should be. If I give myself too much time to think, it is hard not to drift toward sadness.

I’d love to hear from some of my readers on this. What is it that gets you through the day without your child? Do you find that as time goes on it becomes easier?

Peace…D

As bereaved parents, one of the hardest things there is to accept is that our child is really gone. He or she won’t come home again, won’t walk through that door, yelling, “What’s for dinner?” It’s hard to get to the point at which we believe that we can go on living or that we can even believe they are really, finally gone from this plane of existence. Personally, I don’t believe they are ever really “gone” from us. I’ve seen too much to the contrary. But we certainly can’t put our hands on them.

I saw an affirmation the other day for a 12-step program that said:

• We came
• We came to
• We came to believe

This set of statements roughly conforms to the first three steps in AA and Al-Anon:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

We can substitute our situation in this set of statements like so:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our child’s death–that our lives had become unmanageable
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him

What does this mean? It means that eventually, out of our abject and intractable grief, we will find that we are still living, still breathing, still waking up every day. We have to then make the decision that we will look around us and see the mess that has happened since the worst day of our lives. No blame here. It’s just the way it is. Our lives fell apart that day, and rightfully so. Who ever expects to lose a child when we first seek to conceive one? None of us. But we do carry on. We do wake up, and we have to deal with the unmanageable state of our lives.

Finally, regardless of what you believe, whether your higher power is an all-knowing, omnipotent God or whether it is Dr. Phil, you will look somewhere for help. You will look to a sane being for some sanity. You will realize that this problem is bigger than you are and that you need to talk to someone, pray to someone, or just walk out in nature and breathe in the scent of the rain.

Those first simple steps are your road back to sanity. Nothing is as painful or as insane as losing your child, but their is life after loss. We didn’t die. It’s the truth. And we will go on until it is our time to go. Taking a few steps in the right direction, even dancing around them, will lead you back to a good place.

Peace and love, D

‎“We should learn not to grow impatient with the slow healing process of time…there are many steps to be taken along the highway leading from sorrow to renewed serenity…We should anticipate these stages in our emotional convalescence: unbearable pain, poignant grief, empty days, resistance to consolation, disinterestedness in life, gradually giving way…to the new weaving of a pattern of action and the acceptance of the irresistable challenge of life.” – Joshua Loth Liebman

Check your politics at the door here, folks. We are all just bereaved parents or counselors trying to help bereaved parents. So listen when I tell you that there are some beautiful stories featured in this article from the Huffington Post about foundations and good deeds that came out of the losses of 9/11. Enjoy.

Honoring the Memory of 9/11 by Honoring the Memory of 9/12.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/post_2391_b_957737.html

Peace and much love – D