08/11/2015

  Another vital realization about dealing with grief is that change is an inevitable result of a grief-inducing event. It has to be. Oh, we can try to deny grief's impact on us, we can pretend that it really doesn't bother us, we can try to rationalize it away, we can try to hide from it in some way, but sooner or later, if we are truly to begin the healing process, we must accept the unwanted changes that are threatening to take over our life whether or not we choose to acknowledge them. As I struggled to deal with these changes in my life following the death of my son, I often had to admit that I felt a little foolish at times. Of course, it was beyond obvious that my life had drastically changed and not for the better. It was also an indisputable fact that, for the most part, these changes could never be undone. They were permanent. What I could change, at least to a certain degree, was how I reacted and responded to these life-altering changes. I could go on either pretending they weren't such a big deal or I could search for ways to begin to face up to them. If I was to begin to heal on this journey I knew which course I had to follow.

08/10/2015

   The realization that all the things I was feeling and thinking were actually quite normal aspects of the grieving process was a liberating thought up to a point. However, I also began to realize that there was so much more with which I would have to deal. Grief, by its very nature, sets us on a course of unbelievable, uncontrollable, and, most definitely, unwanted chaos. The level of this chaos depends on many factors: our age, the age of the deceased, our relationship with that person, the circumstances surrounding the loss, to name just a few. When my brother died at the age of 22 when I was 12 years old, it did not have nearly as severe an impact on me as the death of my son. My brother had been born with severe cerebral palsy which meant he had never been able to live any kind of so-called normal life. He actually lived many years beyond what the doctors had initially predicted, but he needed full-time care for his entire life. In a similar way, the deaths of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even the death of my father when I was 22, did not affect me nearly as much as the death of my son. We almost accept the death of elderly people as a part of the natural order of life, feeling that they lived a good, long life and have gone on to their reward in the next life. The death of my son was different. He was only 14, just barely getting started in life (although I know he would definitely argue with me on the validity of that point) and was in excellent health. He literally ran out the front door of our house and was gone forever just minutes later. There is just no way to prepare oneself for such a horrific occurrence. There are no classes or seminars to attend beforehand like there are for other parts of life (preparing for marriage, having a baby, changing jobs, buying a house, etc.). I suspect that if someone wanted to join a grief group to prepare themselves for grief before even experiencing the grief-inducing event, other people would perceive such a person to be, at the least, a little crazy. I have come to believe that grief cannot possibly be understood at all until you are already deeply mired in it. Only then are you able to begin to grasp the enormity of the chaos that has begun to fill your life and slowly, ever so slowly, begin to come to terms with it.