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Kim/Joseph's Mommy
 Sep 1, 08 - 11:00 AM |
Sharing our hard times
This is from a TCF electronic letter I receive monthly from the Frankfort, KY Chapter....Written by Dennis Klass It spoke volumes to me today..... ehugs, Kim Sharing Our Hard Times How to hold on and how to let go. How to lose and how to keep. These are hard problems for the bereaved parent. We want to keep the child in our life, we want to remember the child, we want to save those parts of our life which are tied to the child. Yet, as the same time, we know that the child is dead – things can not be as they were before. The memories of good times now bring pain. The memories of bad times raise guilt and feelings of powerlessness. The end of the guilt process is a resolution of this tension between holding on and letting go. We can remember and be sad, we can remember and be happy; we can remember and just be. But it takes a long time for such a resolution and while we are in the process, we find ourselves pulled to one side and then to the other. Sometimes we want to leave the room exactly as it was. Other times we want to put everything away so nothing reminds us of the child. Sometimes we want to talk over and over again about the events of the death, other times we want to avoid the topic altogether. Sometimes all we have left of our child is our sadness, and we don’t want to give up our grief for fear of giving up on our child. All that is a normal process. We go through it at any death. When our parent dies, the problem is how to hold onto our childhood and youth and yet give up our childhood and youth. So we find ourselves keeping a bit of our parents in ourselves by becoming a little more like them. I was once talking about this in a class when suddenly a woman blurted out. “So that’s why I wanted to use the good china so much a year after she died.” It is a lot harder to give up the child and keep the child at the same time, because, when our parents die, we have to lose and keep our past. When our child dies, we have to lose and keep our future. In our grandparents’ day, losing a child was an expected part of life. But it is not in our time. Few of us ever knew anyone else to whom it had happened. So we have few models. Each of us seems to have to find out our own way for ourselves. It is a hard and lonely journey. But the experience of others who have gone down this valley is that there is a resolution at the end. We can hold on and let go. If we can, for a moment, share with others on the same journey, we can help others find directions and let them help us. This is what The Compassionate Friends is all about. Dennis Klass ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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Marlene - Alli's mom 3/16/85 - 6/23/05
Sep 1st, 2008 - 5:21 PM |
Re: Sharing our hard times
Kim - Thanks for sharing. Those words said so much about how we all feel. Thanks, Marlene Alli's mom |
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