After blogging yesterday, all of a sudden some of my own thoughts started detangling and I was able to dissect and think about them clearly. Today, I would like to maybe share some of these thoughts and how I feel (If I can put it into writing). Blogging and writing helps me make sense of the commotion in my head; thank you for reading and being a witness. And just an FYI.. this is L.O.N.G!!!!
First thread to detangle:
For the last 1 year and 11 months I have spent a great deal of my energy not being "that mom". I have listened to my various friends who have lost siblings. I have listened to their concerns about how their moms have handled grief. I have watched my own various friends..other angle moms.. and how they have dealt with their grief. I have seen or have heard of various different ways people have reacted to losing a child. Even before I lost my own child, I thought, "I would want to handle things differently." And now here I am, this far into my journey as an angel mom and I find myself not being "that mom"; however, I have become a completely different kind of "that mom".
Yes, I will admit to "judging" something that I could not ever begin to understand. I judged it long before losing Nick ever happened. I was going to say that maybe "judging" isn't the correct word, but even as I initially typed it, "judging" seems to be the only word, but not in the "OMG they are so horrible way" as much as it was in a "I hope I could learn from this and do things differently." Ya. Still sounds judgmental to me. That's okay. I'm owning it for what it is and I'm learning in the process. It does no one any good to deny their mistakes.
Here is what I have learned. No matter what I might have learned from watching and listening to my friends, grief manifests differently for everyone. A husband and wife can lose the same child; yet grief manifests and they deal with it in completely different ways. The best I can do is be mindful of how my actions affect others. Even at that, I fail miserably. Like I have said before, grief is a very selfish thing. I have realized that people who grieve (at least from my own personal experience) tend to act and react from a place of self-preservation. We are guarded. We are protective. If we were protective of our family members before, we are even more so now. If we were protective and sensitive as individuals before, we are even more so now. We begin to feel sad and realize we can't take anymore sadness. We begin to feel anxious and realize we can not be around things, situations or people that can cause more anxiety. We begin to feel hurt and we put up walls to protect us from being hurt again/more. We start to close ourselves up and very few people are let inside of those locked up gates. We may not even let our surviving children or spouses in. It's a private world. One that is very lonely. It may seems as though we are pushing those that we love away, when what we really need is for those that we love to hold us closer, but we feel unloveable. It is a real paradox and the people that surround us sit staring cluelessly feeling helpless.
I have learned that in not wanting to become "that mom", in my own very personal way, I have become a "that mom" on a very different kind of spectrum. I seriously look at myself and see a "crazy psycho bitch". When I step outside of myself and look at myself through other people's eyes, that is what I see. I may still find joy in places in my life. I may see my surviving children and love on them and do my best to make sure they know that they matter. I may not do any number of things other moms before me have done, but boy howdy, have I done some other crazy things that have earned me the title of "crazy psycho bitch". That may be karma for judging other moms who have grieved before me; I don't know. Either way, what I have learned is this: Be YOU. You can't look at someone else's grief and say, "I am going to do things differently" because in reality, until you are actually grieving, you have no idea how you are going to react, and you certainly can not and should not compare your actions to others. All you can do is be the best you you can be in a horrific situation. Also, be patient with yourself. You are inadvertently going to hurt others, while trying to heal/help yourself. No one likes to hurt others, but when you are grieving, it is inevitable. It just is. Apologize when you feel you need to, and forgive yourself. Do not judge yourself harshly. Love yourself and be gentle. That is the best thing you can do for yourself. Also, don't take what other people say about you too personally. Remember, other people around you are also grieving and dealing the best way they know how.
Thread number two:
There is a tendency of parents to turn their deceased child into a Legend. Grieving parents have a tendency to set their deceased child on a pedestal for all to see. They want the world to see how important their child was. They want their child remembered for the amazing things that child did. Mostly, they just want that child to be remembered.... period. But in doing so, sometimes it can leave the surviving siblings feeling "less than". It can have the surviving siblings feeling like they are competing with memory that is just not in the same league as them, and they are still alive. It is sad.
I have had conversations with my own surviving children about this. Yes, Nick did some amazing things. At the age of 25, he played a part in a huge scientific discovery. That is pretty big. He had a great reputation with his college professors and colleagues. That is great, and yes, we should remember that. But we should also remember the truly horrific things he did. I'm not talking about murdering people, so maybe "truly horrific" is a bit of an exaggeration. However, he did make some very poor choices that hurt people.
The summer between his junior and senior years, he was arrested with numerous felony charges for "jockey boxing". If he had done this in the day time, they would have been misdemeanors; however, at night, they became felonies. (In case you didn't know, "jockey boxing" is ransacking unlocked cars and stealing little things like lose change, road flairs, or whatever else they can find.) When it was all said and done, his charges were plead down to a couple of misdemeanors and he plead guilty in return for 6 months of probation and some community service and restitution. It was supposed to be expunged from his record so no one could find it. However, the government could still get it, and it haunted him and his career path.
Nick had a horrible temper. He was quickly enraged. When he got angry, he was very scary. Unfortunately, he came by this honestly. I still feel badly for that (mostly cause Nate has it too.)
Nick also made some poor choices as a husband (but those are not my stories to tell, and I don't know all the details either.)
Then there was his argumentative side. He was the most stubborn person I had ever met. He was also one of the most opinionated people I have ever met, and his opinion was always right and unwavering. He was your typical scientific atheist. He would start an argument for argument's sake and he was not nice when he did it. This is the part of him where I found myself saying, "I love my child, but I don't like him very much." Yes, you read that correctly. There were lots of times where I just did not like my child (or at least his behaviors) very much.
All of this to say.. Nick was not perfect. He may have done some extraordinary things in his young life and made a mark on this world, but he was not a perfect human being worthy of being put on a pedestal. I am proud of what he accomplished in his short life, and nothing will change that. But the last thing I want people to do is think he was perfect. The last thing I want my surviving children to do is to look at their older, deceased brother as this perfect human being that they can not live up to. I want them to remember their brother for who he was "in total". I want them to remember the mistakes their brother made. I want them to remember the anguish Nick caused me. I want them to remember the times Nick hurt their feelings. I want them to remember EVERYTHING...not just select things that make them feel as though they will never measure up.
With that said, it is also important to praise the surviving children. It is important to make mention of their accomplishments. As a parent of surviving children, it is important to remind the surviving children that they are just as important, if not more important (now) than their deceased sibling. It is important to make sure that they feel like they matter. Take time away from grieving to spend quality time with your surviving children. Spend time one on one and as a family. Get involved in their lives.... even if they are adults. Make time to go to lunch with the adult children. Make time to go for a walk or to the dog park (if they have dogs). Make time to listen to them play their music or talk about their art. Make time to go their events. And when you do this, don't spend the whole time talking about the deceased child. When you are spending quality time with the surviving child, make it about THEM. Love on THEM. Make THEM feel special. That is what they need. That is what they want.
I will say that I am very proud of my 2 surviving children. Nate just started a new job last week. He did one week of training, and just a few days into his new job, they asked him to apply for a permanent position. (The job he has currently is a seasonal one.) He was given a certificate of completion for his training and is now working "live" on the phones. He has a new sense of purpose in his life and a new sense of pride in his eyes. I love seeing that. I love seeing how big his heart is when it comes to his fur baby,Socrates, and listening to his stories about the adventures at the dog park. I love watching him mature; which he has done a bunch of in the last year. He is growing into quite a remarkable young man. His sense of compassion, his passion for music, his sense of humor, his creativity....it is a beautiful thing to watch! Naomi has also gone through quite a growth spurt in the last couple of years. This year in school, she has come up against crazy scheduling and extra hard homework and she is handling it like a champ. Her dedication and sense of commitment is crazy at her age. She used to be plagued with debilitating anxiety, and this year she not only has it under control but has also expanded her social group.
Thread number three:
(Hopefully this is a shorter one)
After yesterday's blog I realized there were some emotions that were being "weighed" or "balanced". How do you go about feeling "happy" and "sad" at the same time? Have you tried? Have you tried sustaining that balancing game for longer than a week or month or even a year? Maybe balancing is not the right word. If you look at a scale, if it is in balance, there is no movement. But if we look at it like a band in harmony, there is give and take with different instruments. That is the way living with grief is like. You can feel two different emotions at the same time, but sometimes one is louder than the other. Eventually, I think, it will be a beautiful piece of music, but right now, it really sounds like 2 kids learning to play the trumpet and clarinet at the same time. They are loud, clashing, and completely out of control.
I have been thinking a great deal about how children feel when one of their parents dies and the surviving parent remarries. I watched close family friends go through that. It was not a good experience. It happened within the first year after our friend died. It was painful for everyone. Then I thought about my own mom and the man she started seeing after my dad died. It was awkward meeting him, but I was happy for her (as long as he made her happy). I think they wanted me to think of him as a "dad figure" but I just couldn't. I had a dad once. I didn't need a 2nd dad..especially one that did not share my same value system. He wasn't a bad man, at all. Just not one that I was willing to see as a father figure. He was my mom's beau and I respected him and was friendly with him. But beyond that, I had no emotional attachment. I didn't need a new dad. My mom, on the other hand, felt completely different about his kids and grand kids, and they felt differently about her. They treated her like family and made her feel like family. I wonder if this type of "relationship after loss" is the way I handle all "relationships after loss"? Maybe I need to spend some time thinking about the people that I have lost and the relationships that have come after them. Either way, there is that feeling of, "I already had THIS person, I don't need someone to fill in." and "I lose this person but I'm glad that my family has a new person to fill that role." Being sad for me.. and happy for them.
It's a weird feeling. Maybe we don't have to feel any certain way about it. Maybe we can just say, "yay for you" and just walk away. Why do we have to assign an emotion to it in the first place? Is there a way to look at it from a detached point of view? I wonder. Maybe it is none of our business.. maybe it is not our responsibility to have an emotion about something that really isn't any of our business. Was it any of my business that my mom had a beau in her life? She is my mom and I love her, but beyond wanting her to be happy, was who she dated really any of my business? Did I deserve or have a right to feel an emotion about her dating? I don't know.
Enough deep thoughts for right now...
As for the white care out front... My mom and Nick had the same car (only different by the year created). They both drove a 2 door white Ford Focus. Nick's was sold a long time ago, but for a while, both of these cars were found in my mom's drive way in Florida. They looked identical. Anyway, my mom still has that car and drives it here. I have never seen her car and thought of Nick. But today, we left her car parked in my drive way as we went to lunch. When I drove back up to my house, with my mom in my car, I saw the white Ford Focus in my drive way and I thought.. "Nate is home!) (Nate never owned the white ford focus... he drives a blue car. NICK drove the focus.) My heart started skipping a beat. Then in an instant it was gone and I was left feeling really sad. I had to stop my car dead in its tracks and take a breath. My mom looked at me and asked what was wrong. I took another breath and explained. "My brain saw the white Ford Focus. Logically it new that one of my sons drove a car like that. It also logically knew that Nick is dead and Nate is my only surviving son. So it said, "Nate is home" and my heart got excited. Then it realized it made a mistake and my emotions caught up with my brain process and felt extremely let down when it realized that Nick was dead, and not at my house and that the white car was actually yours." My poor mom felt so bad. She apologized, like she could have done something different. It's just weird that it happened like that. And yes... a bit sad.
Anyway... there you have it. Some detangling of emotions that have been tied in knots stuck in my head and chest... as well as a jolt to the heart from the white car out front. Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment