The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is
profoundly difficult to bridge. No one, whose children are well and
intact can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children
have absorbed and what they bear. Our children come to us through every
blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast
cereal. We seek contact with their atoms, their hairbrush, their
toothbrush, their clothing. We reach for what was integrally woven into
the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded.
A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed, it often does
not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter
there, is to be cut deeply and torn anew, each time, by the jagged edges
of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where our
children now reside. This will be so for years to come and it will
change us profoundly. At some point in the distant future, the edges of
that hole will have tempered and softened but the empty space will
remain – a life sentence.
Our friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve
for our children, in part, through talking about them and our feelings
for having lost them. Some go there with us, others cannot and through
their denial adds a further measure, however unwittingly, to an already
heavy burden. Assuming that we may be feeling “better” six months later
is simply “to not get it.” The excruciating and isolating reality that
bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any
other human experience. Thus it is a trap – those whose compassion and
insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that
would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And yet, somehow there
are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us
and stay, to our comfort. They have understood, again each in their own
way, that our children remain our children through our memory of them.
Their memory is sustained through speaking about them and our feelings
about their death. Deny this and you deny their life. Deny their life
and you no longer have a place in ours.
We recognize that we have moved to an emotional place where it is often
very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful and
the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that companies us,
sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it its own voice, we
fear we would become truly unreachable, and so we remain “strong” for a
host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our
will. Were we to act out our true feelings we would be impossible to be
with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise.
People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard.
Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every
experience – and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we
will have recovered when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to
be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point or who will still
be with us.
We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents
must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them.
This is our attempt. For those untarnished by such events, who wish to
know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may
provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap.
By Michael Crenlinsten