The moment I got the phone call from my daughter in law telling me that our son Nick was killed in a motorcycle accident, this entire family went into survival mode. As parents, we went went into survival mode.
I was on the phone with my daughter in law, my mom, and the stat trooper who came to my mom's door to tell them Nick has been killed while I watched my daughter, my remaining son and my husband crumble on the floor in a huddle of wails. When I got off of the phone, with my mom and daughter in law, we started making the necessary phone calls to tell them. We started calling airlines to make flight plans. We went into serious survival mode. We needed to get through this. By "this" I mean, get to Florida and figure out what to do with his remains, how to help my daughter in law and my mom. I went into "Make sure Suzy is okay" mode. I completely put my own children aside during this time. I didn't think to make sure their emotional needs were taken care of. I figured they still had us. They still had each other. They would be okay. Suzy lost her husband. But in reality, my children needed me so much more than I could have (in my own grief) ever imagined.
Once the immediate work was done, my husband lost himself in work, and the rest of the family was still in survival mode. How do we survive the death of our beloved Nick? Breath by breath, hour by hour, day by day, week by week... and now its been 3 1/2 years. And I realized something. We have been in survival mode for 3 1/2 years. We have stopped parenting our living children. I stopped giving Naomi the motherly advice a young woman needs; gratefully, I started raising her to be an adult woman at a very young age. She has a good head on her shoulders because I gave her a good starting point before Nick was taken from us. Nate was 21 and had HUGE dreams and was well on his way to following them when Nick was killed and his life came crashing down.
Tracy kept his head buried in work. I just did my best to keep my own sanity and focused on survival and forgot about parenting my children. I lived in fear of losing my children. Naomi got sick. I was dealing with concussions. We had to deal with losing our daughter in law. And now here we are, realizing that we have not parented our children in 3 1/2 years. We have an 18 year old daughter who has her head on her shoulders (thankfully), but I have had to have some discussion with her and she looked at me like I was crazy. "Where did all that 'momming' come from?" I saw the eye rolls. I saw the look she gave me. Our 25 year old son is at home with no formal education or trade working in a job he loves but only pays him $10/hr. That is not enough to live on, but we dont' see him making progress to change these things. WE ahve not set boundaries. Partly because Tracy has been burried in work and avoiding life because of grief and partly because I am terrified of losing another child. I have already lost my oldest son to death and his wife whom I have loved since she was 14 due to grief. I can not bare the idea that I will lose another one of my children. I just can't.
So yes, I have created a problem. My problem... loving too much and not loving responsibly.
Grief doesn't come with a manual. There is no one telling you how to go about grieving. Worse, there is no one out there telling parents who have lost a child how to parent their remaining children (if there is, no one told me about it). Even if you can find a book on how to help your children through grief, there are no books on how to help the parents deal with the idea of possibly losing another child to either grief, death, or to the inevitable blow up that comes with the realization that you have stopped parenting and now you have to parent and that child is going to be angry when the boundaries are set and enforced.
I don't know if any of this is making sense. I am, after all, still recovering from yet another concussion. But my heart is about to shatter and fall to pieces. A couple of weeks ago, when I realized we had stopped parenting, we sat down with the kids individually and explained what was going on. We explained we needed to set some boundaries and expectations. They are both adults. There are things they should be doing....things that we didn't' teach them. Things we never expected of them. But we are now. We love them. We want them to be productive citizens. We want them to be successful adults. We are not asking alot, and by many, certainly not enough. But, it's a start. It scares me. And unless you have lost a child, you will never know exactly how much this scares me. It is so easy to sit on the sidelines with all of your children alive and judge the decisions we have made as parents. But, I'm telling you, the fear of losing another one of my children because they hate us (like we have with our daughter in law) down right paralyzes me. So our son did not do what we asked him to do. Tracy got angry. I asked Tracy not to talk to nate while he was angry, but he felt he needed to. I knew NOTHING good would come of this.
Yelling, cussing, screaming, doors slamming, things being thrown, consequences being followed through with... tough love being practiced. My head is screaming. My heart is shattered. I am terrified. What if Nate leaves and never talks to us again? What if he leaves and we have no way of knowing where he is or if he is even safe? What if I lose my remaining son? I know he needs to grow up. I know he needs to be responsible. I know he needs to learn his lessons that we have neglected to teach him because we have been in survival mode. I know we have created this. I know undoing what we have created is going to be painful. I know all of this. And I am terrified. I am terrified of what this will do to my entire family, not just to me. I am terrified of how this will affect my marriage. I am terrified of how this will affect the relationship between Nate and Naomi. They need each other in this life.
I can only hope and pray that the result will be what we want and need..which is for our children to be responsible mature productive adults. I can only hope that they will realize that we are acting from a place of love. I can only pray that my family will stay in tact.
For those grieving parents out there who still have children at home that you still need to raise. Don't do what we did. I know its hard. I know you want to keep your babies close to home and close to you. I know you can't bare the thought of losing another child. But please,.... please do not stop "momming" them. Give them those lectures. Hold them accountable. Ground them if need be. Take away their phones or their internet. Set boundaries. They need them. They are in survival mode too, but they are also looking to you to guide them. Step up and do it. It's going to be hard. But do it. Parenting is NEVER easy, even when you have all of your children alive. But it becomes so much harder once you lose one and you still have some at home to raise and launch out on their own. Love the, but be strong and set those boundaries and expectations and follow through with consequences. Dont' let your grief blind and bind you. Don't let the grief stop you from being the best parent you can be. Don't let grief tell you that it is okay to love and smother your children to keep them close and safe. Keeping them home and handicapping their adulthood is not the way to show them that you love them. Be strong. Find a way out of you grief so that you can continue to be the best parents you can be and so that you don't find yourself sitting on the couch, like me, afraid that you will lose yet another child (not to death, but to anger and hatred).
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