07/24/2014

   I realize now that in addition to learning how to take things one step at a time, in the early days literally sometimes taking things one breath at a time, there were other things that helped me overcome the various fears that threatened to engulf me.
   I learned that much of the time my feelings and emotions were transitory and that what I might be experiencing at a certain moment would soon be changing. I realized that what I often needed to do was actually the exact opposite of what my emotions were tempting me to do. For example, there were many times when what I really wanted to do was to curl up into a little ball, find an isolated corner in which to hide myself, and wait for the storm to pass. What I discovered I needed to do was to lean more heavily than ever on the people closest to me, especially my wife and children. In this case, I don't mean leaning on them in a sense of dragging them down at such a horrible time, but rather to mean keeping myself available to them, leaning on each other, supporting each other as much as we possibly could to survive together. If we could not stick together and find ways to help each other through something so absolutely horrible, who else was going to help us?
   Unfortunately, we did discover during those early days that some people we thought would always be there for us, could not find it within themselves to do so. We came to realize that many people just felt so uncomfortable around us that they fell by the wayside, some early on in our journey, and others as time went by. Whether it was because they felt helpless not knowing what to say or do or how to comfort us, or because our situation brought the fear and anxiety that if something this awful could happen to a family like ours it could also happen to them, the fact remained that these people were not able to be there for us.
   Conversely, there were other people who actually surprised us with the level of on-going, consistent support they gave to us. In many cases, these people are still with us today. Of course, there is another group of people who we believed would always be there for us, and indeed they have been, every moment of every day and every step of the way. Besides holding on to my wife and children for support, I learned to let these other people who were so concerned about us all, help us in whatever ways they could. Their timing wasn't always perfectly corresponding to what I might have been feeling at a given moment, but I learned to accept that everything they were doing was done out of true love and concern for us. I discovered again that the moments when I most felt like isolating myself from the entire world were often actually the moments when I most needed to allow people to simply love me.

07/09/2014

   After we were given the horrific news that our precious son was gone forever, another emotion that  soon came to the forefront, along with anger, was fear. Fear about what such a drastic change would mean to my life and the lives of my wife and surviving children. Fear about what would happen to us, as individuals and as a family. Fear about how, or even if, we could possibly navigate through something so horrible. Fear for the survival of our marriage. Fear of failing to help our surviving children get through such a loss when we were struggling so much ourselves. Fear that this terrible, all-encompassing fog would never lift. Fear that I would never again be able to laugh, smile, feel joy, happiness or peace. Fear that I would never feel normal again. Fearful of a future stretching years ahead of me-a future that would never include my beloved son. Fearful that I had, for some reason been forsaken by God.

   All of these various fears, and probably others, as well, that I've neglected to mention, if taken as a package, would have been impossible to conquer. They would have been just too overwhelming. We realized early on that the only way we could deal with all that was happening to us was to simply take things one step at a time as each day came. Yes, my life had changed-it had been shaken to its core-and much would never be the same again.  However, in spite of the absolutely mind-numbing loss of Curtis, and all the myriad ways that loss has affected my life, there have been many positive aspects that have developed, as well. I will never, ever be able to say that my life is better without my son, perish the thought! I am, however, grateful that I have learned how to better appreciate the positives and dwell less on the negatives. That is not always easy to do, even after all these years. I think that of all the fears I felt in those early days of my journey, that fear was the most pervasive-that I would never again in my life be free of grief, and all that results from that emotion. I feared that I would not be able to find the strength to help my wife or children because of the grief; that I would not be able to function as a person with any degree of consistency because of my grief; that everything I had been and everything I had done would be lost forever because of my grief; that the way I was feeling because of my grief was the way I would feel every single second for the rest of my life; that I would let Curtis, who had loved life so much, down, by not living my life in a positive way because of my grief; that in some perverse way the man who had taken my son from me would win if I gave up because of my grief. I couldn't let those things happen. I had to find a way out of this debilitating fog that swirled all around me. As I tried to deal with only one thing at a time, putting one foot in front of the other, taking in one breath at a time, I slowly began to find my way, sometimes very slowly.