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Waves of grief

I found the following on website that the link didn’t work when I sent it to anyone else so copied it and emailed it to a couple of people. But I’m sharing it here too because I think that this description is so accurate. It’s something that EVERYONE should read.

When Asked for Advice on How to Deal with Grief, This Old Man Gave the Most Incredible Reply

Someone on reddit wrote the following heartfelt plea online:

“My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

Many people responded with words of encouragement, but one response in particular, by an older gentlemen, really stood out from the rest…

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love.

So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out.

But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

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Unformed and raw….

 

I keep thinking that I want to write out my emotions. I keep feeling like I want to share. And then I decide I’m too raw, I’m too weak, it’s too fresh and that people don’t want to read or hear feelings from that place. I recognise how those thoughts won’t be well formed or even linear because that entirely how my thoughts are. There’s this overwhelming fog that stops some level of process and function. Not so much that you can’t focus but so much that you don’t feel you always makes sense. Why would I put that down on paper?

But the reality is that maybe I need to do this for me, for our baby, for our family and for those who walk alongside us or others.

Our baby was ‘only’ 10 weeks gestation. We never even got to see that baby. We didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy, although in my head he was totally a boy because it is what I know. But what hits me so hard is how much love my heart has for our little one. I am flooded by this feeling of love I will never get to share with its recipient. Flooded with a sorrow that a part of family will always be missing. Devastated that a part of my heart will always be broken. When the sonographer confirmed our baby was gone a part of my heart shattered and though I am assured and understand that the rawness of that reality will go, the brokenness of that reality will always remain.

At 10 weeks gestation our baby was just a quarter of an ounce heavy and only around 4cm long. Such a tiny speck but the baby had our DNA and all of it’s arms and legs and a heart. At 10 weeks they were our baby as much as when they would have been 10 weeks post natal.

I fight the feeling to lessen the reality of this babies life. I fight the feeling people will think we are ‘over reacting’ in our grief since we had not met them, or seen them or held them. I fight those feelings because this baby was every bit our baby as Zachary and Solomon and every bit a part of our family and my heart.

I grieve the love we never got to give them and the fights they never got to have with their big brothers.

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Miscarriage processing

I want to write but my words feel lost. I feel pulled to write but I don’t know what to write. I’m nudged to put thoughts down but don’t know what those thoughts are. It’s like there’s two parts of me fighting over what I should do.

We were pregnant. For 6 weeks we knew about a baby who would join our family next April. We were apprehensive about the change that this baby would bring but we were excited. Excited for our boys to have another sibling. Excited that this baby would get to have our boys as it’s big brothers. We were excited for Christmases and birthdays and family holidays and weddings. We had dreams and we thought about practical things like bedroom arrangements and car seat positions.

At 9 weeks and 5 days pregnant having excitedly told some of our closest friends the night before about our new baby I discovered I was bleeding. I struggled to get the words out to tell Ross. My voice wouldn’t work. My brain could not comprehend. I tried to reason that this happens to so many women whilst at the same time being filled with this dread that I knew what was happening to my body.

We lost our baby over that weekend and I lost a part of my heart with it. Our family will never feel fully complete as there will always be a part of it missing.

1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I knew that 1 in 4 end this way and yet somehow, despite a totally normal fear that we would lose the baby, I never dreamed that it would actually happen to us. I was comfortable being 3 in 4. It was safe there.

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The heart knowledge 

Have you seen the film frozen? Brace yourself but I haven’t… it’s worse because we own it but haven’t actually watched it! 🤦🏼‍♀️  I do however feeel like I’ve seen it given how many of the songs I know and how much of the storyline I know!

This isn’t a completely random thought it’s linked to the continuance of the topic nagging, maybe I shall call it God nagging?! But I’ll get to that in a second – just thought I should confess my lack of Frozen viewing with you before I continue!

We established I have the head knowledge for a renewing of my mind just not the feeling, the heart knowledge.

It’s something that feels too big for me to find the solution to. In fact I think this is often the point that I get to in the topic when it crops up. Knowing what I need to know but not feeling it and not knowing how to move forward to feel it.

As I ran this afternoon I listened to a talk on love and came back to a statement about really struggle with.

Susie who was speaking said: “The secret to loving people and doing relationships well is being loved my God” She then quoted Tim Keller: “Before love is a behaviour, love is an experience. We have to be captured by that love, shattered by that love and only then can it empower us to love”.

What I struggle with in this statement is that I don’t feel that I know I am loved and worth the effort etc BUT I do feel that I know how to love others. Seriously my brain really struggles because the statement when it comes up time and time again makes me doubt my love for others. Either I am loving wrong or am loving from the wrong place. OR I have felt loved by God at times and that’s enough to enable me to love people well? OR loving people would be easier if I lived loved? You’ll be sensing my confusing on the subject I suspect!!

I don’t know that answer.

I read a Proverbs 31 Ministries devotional this morning that touched on this subject. The writer was communicating on Galations 5:1 and how we are free because of Christ and that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be burdened by things because of that.

THIS is where the Frozen reference will start to make some sense. As I read the devotional it talked about how we slip into habits of pain or frustration and that even once the pain is gone we continue to feel it. God has taken away the ‘issues’ in life by dying on the cross for us but we often limp around as if we are still holding them. We need to let go of the past and walk without the limp.

I’m pretty sure that my past is what puts up all the road blocks to me living loved and knowing and experiencing just how loved I am. I’m pretty that I need to Let It Go as the song would say because that is what the bible calls me to do.

Nothing complicated or anything!!!!! I just need to let go of things and learn to live loved…..

Just don’t know how to get past a life time of past and move forward without the baggage holding on and holding me down.

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Infertility – in the trenches

I thought I’d share an email we sent to family 3 years into trying for a baby. Miraculously just 1 week later we found out we were expecting our little bear. I share this to hopefully encourage others and to share the resources we shared with family.

Hello all

Apologies for the mass email; we wanted to update you with where we’re at in our attempts to start a (or more accurately, to grow our) family, and an email was the easiest way to get everyone up to speed. Obviously, this is not something we wanted to include in the Christmas letter!

We’ve now been trying to conceive without success for over 3 years, and in that time we’ve really valued your prayers and your support. We understand that it’s impossible to know how to support us fully without you having been through the same situation, and we find this with our close friends as well.

Since we started trying, we have been to the doctors twice about the issue: first to have some initial tests, which showed no obvious issues, and the second time they said they wouldn’t be able to treat due to Sarah’s weight. We’ve since spoken to friends who are medical professionals who have assured us that this is a formality (bureaucracy) and not a medical reason. Sarah has obviously been trying to lose weight, and at times has done quite well, but infertility is an emotional roller coaster which doesn’t help the process of weight loss, and so she hasn’t been as successful as she would have liked. She has recently started trying to stick to Slimming World more seriously and with more fervour, and she always appreciates your support in helping her to eat well (Slimming World isn’t always obvious in what ‘eating well’ means as it’s different in different circumstances, so please ask if we’re eating with you and you’re not sure – she/we won’t be offended!)

Since the end of last year we have been thinking about going private for further tests, and have decided to pursue that this year. We still need a referral from the GP for this but the weight loss requirements are less when you go private. Sarah still has a few more pounds to lose before this bar is met, but it is much more achievable, given the circumstances. Obviously there are costs involved in this which start off quite piecemeal, so we will see how it goes and whether it’s something God wants us to pursue all the way. Thankfully, we have been saving for when we have a baby, and after praying, talking with friends, and discussing it between us, we feel this is an appropriate use of the money. (There’s certainly no point in storing up the money without the baby!) Although our savings aren’t much, it’s enough to get started. We have faith that if this is God’s path, he will provide the money when we need it.

We’re grateful that we’re able to talk about this openly with you and that you are all understanding and considerate people. We want to let you know that we do find life hard because of all of the above, and sometimes it can be particularly bad around special occasions where the absence of a child in our family is all-the-more obvious to us, or when we have recently had another negative result. Consequently, sometimes we may withdraw from situations or conversations, or even decline invitations to events that might rub salt in an open wound. We appreciate your sensitivity in these situations. Also, there are some topics of conversation that could provoke an emotional response internally (which may or may not become external!). We don’t expect you to know what these are, as sometimes we don’t even know what they are ourselves, but this is just to give an explanation in advance if we come across as short, withdrawn, or just a bit ‘off’!

All that said, we honestly don’t mind talking about our infertility journey, and if you ever think of questions, we’re more than happy to answer them. It’s rare that you would upset us by bringing it up, as chances are, it’s already on our minds.

We could carry on giving advice on how to support us, but there’s a website that has it pretty well pegged, by the author of a book called ‘Hannah’s Hope’ that we’ve read. (If you’d like to read it to gain a greater insight in to what we’re going through, we can lend it to you, or it’s available on the Kindle at a reasonable price.) 

http://www.hannah.org/?i=5455&mid=7

Look for the section titled ‘HOW TO ENCOURAGE YOUR INFERTILE OR BEREAVED FRIENDS’ roughly two thirds of the way down. There’s a little bit to read; we’d be very grateful if you were able to spare a few minutes to read it all, as it really is very good advice.

There’s also a video linked from that page: (can be watched without audio)

http://www.tearsandhope.com/emptyarms_video.html

It’s a smidgen cheesy but conveys pretty much where we’re at, although the suggestions for support don’t go into as much useful detail as the hannah.org website.

We’ve seen God do a lot in us in the last 3 years, and we still have hope in Him for what the future holds. We’ve had words, pictures, and Bible verses from God through friends and strangers, so despite wobbles in our faith at times, we still know that God has us in his hands, and that he has his best for us in store.

Anyway, sorry this has been so long; thank you for reading this far (if you skipped to the end, shame on you! ;-D), and thank you for your thoughts, prayers and love, both in the past and the future.

Love

R&S x

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1 year one – who was Sue? Grandma

Mum was known as Grandma while she was alive. We recently made the decision to change it Granny or Granny Sue. We found that when we talked about Grandma or Grandma Sue, Zac would still think we talking about Ross’ mum Grandma and we wanted her to be defined because she LOVED being a Grandma.

When Mum died for ages on my mental to do list was to write down for Zac what Granny Sue did for him and with him as he won’t remember it himself. For a long time it was too painful, then it just kept slipping my mind so I never got round to it.

Some words to describe Mum as Grandma. Over bearing, in your face, over eager, over enthusiatic and potential spoilt brat creator OR generous, hands on, willing, loving, excited, caring, interactive, responsive and communicative. It would swing between the two different feelings to be honest but the old Zac got the more I was glad that she was interactive as much as she was with him.

Mum loved Zac. Zac love Mum. Simple as. He didn’t care what she gave him or anything like that he just knew this lovely lady would try up, try and interactive with him too quickly (bless them both!!) and then play with him as much as she possibly could and as much as he could possibly want. He would love to explore with her and hold her hand and she would love to take him anywhere she could go with him.

I loved the gifts she turned up with. The odd tshirt she’d have found in the sale somewhere or that she couldn’t resist. Toys she’d seen that she thought he would love and she was often very right. Tool kits, cars and trucks and all sorts of baby toys.

She created a good excuse for spoiling him with baby toys. In the 5 weeks she looked after him while I went back to work she could take him into Nottingham city centre on one of the three days. We’d come from work and there’d a be a new toys because she ‘forgot’ to take a toy into town with her!! He loved it and now Sully is seeing the benefits too!

On the note of going into town that’s where mum would feed him up on carrot cake, particularly the icing I think. I remember the Health Visitor asking me if Zac was getting a balanced diet and responding that he was from me but I couldn’t guarantee it from Grandma!

She was so keen for Zac to start walking and talking and excited for all the things they were going to do together and I often find my heart is actually heaviest when I mourn my mum as Grandma for all the things she’s missing and all the things that my boys (and me) are missing out of from her.

She was generous with her time and money and love and hugs and was always sorry that she couldn’t give more than she did despite giving so much.

Sue as a Grandma had a HUGE heart and I know for a fact that she would be loving having two Grandsons to play with. In fact I think she’d have been really torn between having little baby hugs and wanting to explore and play with Zac.