Grief doesn't have a time limit. This is a lesson I've learned the hard way as time has gone on. I've been fortunate in life to have not lost anyone close to me before Kenneth died, so his death and my subsequent grief journey is the only experience I have with loss. I've heard that the loss of a child is different, somehow, to other kinds of loss. I wouldn't know. I suppose one day, I'll face the loss of others that are dear to me, and then I'll have a means of knowing. Until then, I have this.
There are a thousand little ways that losing a child still hurts, even several years later. It's the small stab of pain when a stranger, smiling, asks you "How many children do you have?". It's the guilt you feel when you consider saying "One" when the answer is really "Two", just so that you don't have to see the pity in the stranger's eyes or explain that your other child is dead. It's the feeling of incompleteness in your home that will never really go away, because one is and will always be missing. It's feeling joy at watching your living child meet his milestones, while simultaneously feeling grief that you never got to see that same milestone with your lost child. It's going on with life with a measure of happiness, all the while feeling a little guilty because when your child died, you were sure your capacity for happiness died too, and to experience it again feels like a betrayal. It's feeling guilt for thinking of your dead child while playing with your living one.
Since we lost Kenneth, blogging has become my means of coping with his death. I can wrestle with the thoughts that plague me, get them out in writing so that I can organize them and make sense of them. I'd thought that I should change the direction of my blogs, but the reality is that Kenneth's life and death are such a huge part of me now. I cannot make him the focus of my "real life", because I have a living child who needs me and who should not have to live in his brother's shadow. Blogging about Kenneth and my grief allows me to keep it in it's proper place, out of my head and away from Grant for the time being.
This blog will continue to talk about Kenneth, and grief, and death, and life. They're all one big tangle in my head, maybe because they're all interconnected. Kenneth changed me permanently, and it would be wrong for me to pretend that my life is the same as it was before. Time has healed me of the anguish that went with his loss, but not the chronic pain that comes with knowing that he will always be gone. Time can't take away the well-meaning strangers, the little stabs of pain, the unreasonable feelings of guilt. They're a part of the new life that I have, a part of my new normal.
There are a thousand little ways that losing a child still hurts, even several years later. It's the small stab of pain when a stranger, smiling, asks you "How many children do you have?". It's the guilt you feel when you consider saying "One" when the answer is really "Two", just so that you don't have to see the pity in the stranger's eyes or explain that your other child is dead. It's the feeling of incompleteness in your home that will never really go away, because one is and will always be missing. It's feeling joy at watching your living child meet his milestones, while simultaneously feeling grief that you never got to see that same milestone with your lost child. It's going on with life with a measure of happiness, all the while feeling a little guilty because when your child died, you were sure your capacity for happiness died too, and to experience it again feels like a betrayal. It's feeling guilt for thinking of your dead child while playing with your living one.
Since we lost Kenneth, blogging has become my means of coping with his death. I can wrestle with the thoughts that plague me, get them out in writing so that I can organize them and make sense of them. I'd thought that I should change the direction of my blogs, but the reality is that Kenneth's life and death are such a huge part of me now. I cannot make him the focus of my "real life", because I have a living child who needs me and who should not have to live in his brother's shadow. Blogging about Kenneth and my grief allows me to keep it in it's proper place, out of my head and away from Grant for the time being.
This blog will continue to talk about Kenneth, and grief, and death, and life. They're all one big tangle in my head, maybe because they're all interconnected. Kenneth changed me permanently, and it would be wrong for me to pretend that my life is the same as it was before. Time has healed me of the anguish that went with his loss, but not the chronic pain that comes with knowing that he will always be gone. Time can't take away the well-meaning strangers, the little stabs of pain, the unreasonable feelings of guilt. They're a part of the new life that I have, a part of my new normal.
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November 25, 2009 at 10:58 AM
I am so glad you have an outlet for expressing your feelings of pain and loss. I was extremely saddened by the comment of your feelings of guilt when you consider saying one child instead of two to save seeing the pity in a stranger's eyes. Always say two! I like how you worded it in the about me section. "I am the mother of two boys, one in heaven and one here on earth!" God bless you and your family always.