Chapter 19, PART 1

Most people will not be aware that you have changed forever. You will not in two or five or twenty years become “your old self” again. You will learn to accept it and carry on. Some people turn to religion, to work, or to other people, and some never recover, drifting into alcoholism or depression and never work their way back out. This experience alters your life emotionally and psychologically, although not as visibly as someone who has an accident and suffers a physical blow.

Others do not understand unless very, very close to you that your child’s death is in your psyche waiting to come to the surface at any time. You can be seemingly fine and then drift into a week of depression without any particular cue to set off the feelings. You might not be able to isolate why this week, of no particular importance, became a bad one. Although it bubbles to the surface, the magnitude and depth of the sorrow seem bottomless to you. People might see your eyes mist over, but they have no idea that your eyes are simply a dam for the flood you want to let loose.

Chapter 19, PART 2

You need comfort if you have a period of grieving at three years, just as much as you did at three weeks afterwards. Some of us have almost no one with whom we can cry our deepest sorrow and not feel uncomfortable, so the person who seems to do well on the outside might have an hour or two of crying at night alone. If you cannot rely on someone for comforting throughout this period, you feel abandoned by that person. No matter how valid the excuse you make for their behavior, unless they acknowledge your suffering, it feels as though they do not care.

Especially at the beginning, it takes tremendous effort some mornings just to get out of bed and face whatever the day holds in store for you, even if you seem to have handled the situation well. We do it in the hopes that the day will improve.

Chapter 19, PART 3

Your emotions continue to swing for a long, long time afterward, depending on the person, causing you to feel mentally unstable. This feeling of insanity is not pleasant and causes you to wonder if you’ll ever become stable again. You do not have the resources, temporarily, to comfort and nurture someone else as you did before. You try to help your other children, but someone who feels insane does not feel capable of offering any type of advice.

You have strong fears about the safety of your remaining children. I do not know if this will ever go away; I presume it will, but until they are safe in your house again for the night, a dread exists. You also fear experiencing devastating loss again, whether it be your children, spouse, or any loved one. You wonder if you can take another hit.

Chapter 19, part 4

Sometimes you have a need to retreat from life’s once joyful activities because they no longer hold the prospect of enjoyment as they did before. When people gather for the holidays or parties, you might be happy to see people and find that enjoyable, but the enthusiasm for the big event is gone. I often would hide my feelings so that others did not feel down with me, so I cannot blame someone if they do not notice. Even when my feelings were noticeably down, my husband would not address the issue. I asked him why and he said, “I can’t do anything about it.” He wasn’t trying to make me feel worse: he just realized he could not make it better.

Chapter 19, part 5

ACTIVITY

If you have ever felt that a person close to you does not acknowledge your feelings, write down what they can do. It might be as simple as saying, “I know this must be trying and if I could help I would.” Then, tell them what they can do. Do not expect them to know.