Category: Grief

Early grief after loss of a child

This addresses the early grief of losing a child. Not to any specific cause of death although I lost my son Charles to suicide.

2 minutes, 12 seconds

What can you expect after that initial intense grief of the early days? Will it be like that forever? What happens after that?  I can’t say all the stages but I can tell you what grief has become for me over time.

I hope this helps. Because I remember wondering what was in store for me. Would I ever love again, laugh again, live again? You will. I can’t say how … Read more...

Thinking of parents who have children still using or incarcerated this holiday

It’s a different kind of grief.

Knowing that the child you love is behind bars or in them. Still struggling with that demon known as addiction. There is a lot of stress in families this time of year that they are not the ‘Norman Rockwell’ painting of togetherness.

I remember how we’d discuss this every year in Families Anonymous. If our child was still using and not in recovery, this time of year was especially hard. For parents of those incarcerated due to their addiction, it was hard. While it’s definitely hard if you’ve lost a child, I don’t have … Read more...

We’re fixers not listeners

We need to be listeners. But if we can’t fix it, we tend to turn in the other direction.

Those of you who’ve suffered watching a loved one with addiction or a mental illness or both know what I mean. We wanted the formula. And in our first support group, we sat there waiting for the magic recipe to fix our kid. There had to be steps we simply missed.

If we took them to the right rehab, said just the right thing, did just the right thing, everything would turn around and we’d have our child back.

After our … Read more...

Grief and Life Events

Family weddings are wonderful. But all life events for those of us who’ve lost a child are bittersweet. It was so good to see all my family and had a great weekend in Charleston, SC with my mom, my first cousins with whom I grew up in Fayetteville, NC.

Do you want your child who died to be forgotten?
… Read more...

I still struggle

Right after Charles’ suicide, the only way I got through those first few weeks after my family left was to remind myself that it will never hurt as much as it did when we got that unbearable news.

A few months later I thought “getting better” or moving forward would mean I wouldn’t think of him every day. Then that thought would frighten me. But I do think of him every day and now I know I always will.

There are so many times I feel like a kite on a tight string in a high wind flapping furiously in … Read more...

Previous loss helped me build resilience

By Jule, Germany, Age 16

The first time I would say my life was severely shattered was on November 1, 2016, when I got the message that my very good friend Christian died by suicide.

I was shocked and heartbroken. I had seen him in the school hallway a day earlier. However, I did not cry a single tear. So many people from school started crying. I’ve even seen teachers crying.

But the thing I felt most was nothing. A giant emptiness that never really went away.

Over time I wondered if that was normal. People told me that I … Read more...

One reason to live

by Tamara Harvey Braswell

I remember when the Netflix series came out, “13 reasons Why.” I didn’t get past the preview, thinking I had enough real-life tragedy and wasn’t interested in immersing myself in such a sad story, regardless of the overarching messages it may have had.

I know death

I know what it is like to find the father of my child – my husband of years ago – dead from an overdose. Suicide was cause of death.

Logan

I know what it is like to whisper in my teenage son’s ear as he lies in ICU … Read more...

The day I realized I was breakable

I realized I was vulnerable when my first child was born.

I realized I was breakable the day I lost my son Charles to depression.

As Charles once wrote, “Life can crush your perfect world in under a second.” And while my life was far from perfect before he died, my world was completely shattered after.

What happened? I had a direction. I had a plan. No one marked the land mines or sent off warning flares.

I didn’t know what breakable was until it happened. I lost any shred of innocence and naiveté I had left. My fairy Godmother didn’t come … Read more...

Is your grief worse than someone else’s?

is your grief worse than someone elses

Let’s face it. Losing a child hurts. Period. It’s devastating. So devastating you wonder how you will go on. You wake up every day for months and then it dawns on you that your worst nightmare is actually true.

It can’t hurt more.

All I can say is that a suicide is a loss like no other and you don’t know it until you’ve been through it.

A stigmatized death like suicide or overdose does carry with it some shame that other causes of death do not. It’s still a “less noble” cause of death for some reason. So there … Read more...

Joy and sadness

Such joy to visit my oldest son Richard living in LA.

Sadness because my youngest son, Charles, was not with us.

Joy to see Richard handling real life and maturing.

Sadness that he’s so far away from us.

Joy to see my oldest follow a dream he’s had since 8th grade.

Sadness that my youngest didn’t get to do the same.

Joy in the fact that Richard has a solid job at a good company (Tom Hanks studio, Hertzog)

Sadness that I have to leave and go home.

It’s hard to get used to the roller coaster of emotions … Read more...

Goodbye normal life

by Christine Dudek

I wish I had the words to describe the deadness that occupies the places in me where other things once lived – -things like humor.

It seems like I have a sense of humor at times but everything is shallow. The depth that I used to experience and feel is gone. Pain is what I feel deeper and more often than any other feeling. I feel that even more than I feel love.

I swear sometimes the miss, and the sorrow, and the regret are so deep that my bones ache.

Bone sad.

I hate being still … Read more...

The war on grief

by Jon Farrow

war on grief

They say that the grief process for someone who loses a loved in a car accident or to suicide is very similar. The correlation being the unexpected loss, the inability to prepare for the unthinkable, the sudden stop of life that leaves you with whiplash.

I lost my Mom to cancer when I was 6 years old

Even then, seeing my Mom in the hospital frail and fragile, I knew it wasn’t good. I didn’t know what death meant at the time, but I knew it was forever. I knew if I lost my Mom I would … Read more...

No Place in All the World

by Robert M. Hubbard in memory of his son, Robert Alan Hubbard, who died by suicide September 8, 1985. This poem from his therapeutic writing, ‘A Grief Observed’

No place in the world

How desperately sad
it must be to feel
that there is no place
in all the world
for you. Loneliness unending.

Urgent anger rooted
in black-pit pain,
knowing of no place
in all the world
where you can find refuge.

No one to turn to, no one
to heed your pleas
for acceptance, for
acknowledgement,
for validation and love.

Life is filled with many paths,
with many … Read more...

How gummi bears saved my brain

I didn’t tell you how my brain tumor was discovered.

Charles was 3 years old and wanted to take a shower. No more baths! Daddy didn’t take baths. Daddy took showers so Charles needed to take showers.

I had to tell Charles that he could not eat his pack of gummy bears in the shower. He didn’t want to leave them because he knew I loved them. But I scooted him in the shower. Charles gets out of the shower and says. “Hey mom, you ate one!”

I say, “No way, I wouldn’t do that.”

Charles says, “Stick out your … Read more...

Typical hurt day

grieving tree
The grieving tree

Wrung out, cried out and feeling the dull ache of ‘miss you Charles.’

Not wanting to get out of bed. But I do.

Not wanting to run. But I do.

Nothing I can grab onto. Sinking.

I want to fix this. But I can’t.

Trying to get out of my own head. But stuck.

Trying to get things done. So unproductive.

Trying to feel normal. Impossible.

Thinking of ways to jumpstart myself. No energy.

Try to straighten my bent posture. I need a crowbar.

Talking to the air. It doesn’t talk back.

Begging for a … Read more...