Category: Grief

Light in the darkness

12/6/2016

Within days of Max's death, we started to receive lots of cards of sympathy and condolences in the mail. One such card came from a woman I had never met; in fact, she was (and still is) a stranger to us. She was writing because she had read about Max's accident in the news, learned that he died as a result, and had also suffered a similar loss when her daughter died suddenly from a similar accident years earlier. What she wrote in the card was brief, yet heartfelt, and it was the first time I learned about The Compassionate Friends and their annual worldwide candlelighting event:

Now believed to be the largest mass candle lighting on the globe, the 20th annual Worldwide Candle Lighting, a gift to the bereavement community from The Compassionate Friends, creates a virtual 24-hour wave of light as it moves from time zone to time zone. TCF’s WWCL started in the United States in 1997 as a small internet observance, but has since swelled in numbers as word has spread throughout the world of the remembrance. Hundreds of formal candle lighting events are held and thousands of informal candle lightings are conducted in homes as families gather in quiet remembrance of children who have died, but will never be forgotten.

So on December 9, 2012, at 7 pm our time, we lit a candle at home for our son Maxwell Dennis Romeo. It was surreal to know that around the country and the world, other parents were doing the same thing for their dead children at 7 pm in their local time zone when just weeks earlier, we had never known such an event existed.

This coming Sunday, we will be lighting a candle again for our boy. Actually, I'll probably light several of them because I like candles and soft, glowing light that pierces the darkness, if only for an evening.

(Sometimes friends light candles for Max, too. When they do, I love it when they take photos of their candles and share them with me. It reassures me that through their quiet rememberance of Max, my son will never be forgotten. For a bereaved mother, that's about as good as it gets.)

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Another anniversary

10/18/2016

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It never gets easier. For some wounds, time is most definitely not a healer. In fact, time is often a cruel master.

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the death of Maxwell Dennis Romeo, my son.

Four years ago, I was sitting at my kitchen table wondering how I was ever going to sleep again and more importantly, what now? How do you plan for the funeral of your child? Where do you even begin?

So I drank a lot of the very fine bourbon that a friend had smuggled into the ICU of Akron General earlier in the day where I was keeping vigil. We both had assumed I would be spending long days there while Max recovered from his very extensive injuries and the bourbon was a gift to help ease the nights there.

We were so very wrong about that.

"Hurry up!" I hollered from the kitchen before he left for school on the day of the accident. Not "Goodbye." Not "I love you!"

The next time I saw him he was unconscious and trapped in the twisted metal of his car.

I went to class yesterday because I had a quiz. I had thought about emailing my professor to explain why I wouldn't be in class that day (aka, revealing my tragic backstory), but I eventually nixed that idea largely because the syllabus provides no make-up options for quizzes.

After the quiz, I went outside to cry, which smudged my makeup. I subsequently spent a considerable amount of time trying to convince myself to go back into the classroom for the lecture and lab that followed. (Eventually I did.)

While I was outside, squatting against a brick wall and sobbing quietly, a small bird flew so close to me that I could feel it in my hair. It felt to me like the bird was acknowledging my pain. Or maybe not. Perhaps it was just a weird bird acting erratically.

Nevertheless, I like my version better.

Just when I thought I would never discover another new photo of Max -- I mean, it's been four years already -- yesterday I found two of them. Photographs are like gold to a grieving mom, so finding two in one day is like winning the lottery.

Natalie was home from Kentucky this weekend for fall break (aka the shittiest time of the year.) She was planning to leave on Sunday afternoon to go back to school for Monday classes, but we talked her out of it. She pulled the "dead brother" card in emails to her professors Sunday night and left for school yesterday around the same time that I did.

Next year, we need a better plan. This was the first time in four years that I actually had to be somewhere on the anniversary, and I guess I didn't really understand how woefully unprepared I was for it.

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October is gunning for me

10/4/2016

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We were in a van. Roger was driving, and I was in the front passenger seat. The three youngest kids were in the backseats. The street ahead was crowded with people, many of them armed with enormous guns with wide barrels. Roger turned right at the intersection, but took the turn too fast and -- through a slow-motion series of events that can only happen in a dream -- the van ended up completely upside down in the middle of the now deserted road.

I unbuckled from my seat and crawled to the back of the van to free the kids from their car seats and seatbelts. They were unhurt, and I felt such relief! But relief soon turned to worry; how were we going to get out of this mess (read: how are we going to pay for this?), and WHERE THE HECK WERE THE PEOPLE WHO CAN HELP US?

Then gunshots, so many gunshots. I lost count of how many as I scrambled to keep my kids flat on the floor of the van (which was actually the roof) to avoid being hit by a bullet. The entire van was filled with the very palpable presence of fear and anxiety.

Fortunately, because it was a dream, the people shooting at us had terrible aim and no one was hit.

What does it mean? Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Scientists are keenly interested in sleep research and what happens in the brain when we slumber. Meanwhile, armchair philosophers claim to be able to interpret dreams. I've never given any of it much thought other than waking up from a particularly weird or scary dream with a deep sense of relief or sometimes longing.

But here's my private theory: October arrived again, as it always does, and sucked the air out of the room. October means pain.

And now, apparently, October is gunning for me and a few more of my kids.

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Music triggers

9/20/2016

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Some days more than others, I am reminded of how important music is to me. For instance, this song -- actually the entire album from which it came -- helped lull Max to sleep when he was a baby. I hadn't thought about this little memory tidbit in ages.

Thanks, Harvest Moon 2016, for allowing me to remember a little slice of joy from my life with my son.

Recently, I was sitting in Roger's music studio listening to a song that my 11 year old recorded when he was 6. I was simultaneously struck by 2 things:
1) It's really good.
2) When he dies, I'll want to know where to find this for the funeral.

That, my friends, is what my brain does every day.

Since then, I've had this next song running in continuous loop in my head. Facebook reminded me that I had shared this on my page in
2010, well before Max died and while deeply pregnant with my last baby when I was really worried about someone very, very dear to me.

If a song can stick with a person through many intensely emotional seasons, it must be good.

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Spring Rites

5/7/2016

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Mother's Day and graduation ceremonies are all colluding this year to kill me. Or at least that's what it feels like.

But first...

...Mamas, I rejoice with you as you celebrate and share the accomplishments of your children. You are so, so, SO very proud of them, and damn well you should be. You worked hard, prayed hard, cried hard, and loved hard to help shepherd them to reach their goals.

Ya done good, Ma.

I submitted one of my final projects tonight. With finals next week, I'm this close to finishing the semester, and unless I flub it completely, I think I will be able to maintain my 4.0 GPA for awhile longer.

But there's this heaviness, a weighty oppression that sucks the oxygen out of the room, that reminds me while I'm studying and while I'm not that none of this is normal.

Not one damned thing of this is normal.

Maxwell should be the one agonizing over finals week. Not me. In fact, Maxwell should be graduating from Kent State in six days.
I should be proud of all he's done and fretting about his future. I should be bragging about him on Facebook and bombarding my loved ones with photos documenting his triumphs. In short, I should be doing regular mom stuff.

I wish I could tell you that I am going somewhere with this maudlin navel-gazing. Alas. I am not. Except, perhaps, for this:

If you have a mother, please hug or call her this weekend. If you are a mother, please hug or call your children this weekend. And if you know a bereaved mother, please know that this is probably an intensively difficult time for her.

Mother's Day and graduation days are likely conspiring to undo her.

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Pain

4/20/2016

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I had to go to Kent State Tuscarawas campus today to drop off some paperwork. As I was arriving, a young man driving a red Cavalier was leaving. It looked just Maxwell's car, and the young man could have been his age, too. I know I told you all last month that I used to dread seeing cars like that, but that now I look forward to it because it's an opportunity to say, "Hi Max!"

Today's sighting was different. Today I imagined what it was like when Max left campus that sunny afternoon, oblivious to the fact that he would never make it home. Today it hurt. Today I'm reminded anew of the future that was taken from me when he died.

He would be graduating from Kent State next month if only...

I should be planning his graduation party; instead I'm reeling again from a sucker punch to the gut.

Death is a miserable bastard.

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Hi Max!

3/20/2016

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Just about every day, sometimes multiple times a day, I see a red Chevy Cavalier like the one Max drove. In the months after he died, it used to really upset me. I mean, I can still see in my mind's eye his little car parked in the driveway, and I can still see the smashed wreck of his vehicle and hear the buzz of the metal saw the rescue workers used to free him from his metal prison...

...but now.

But now I look forward to passing one of these cars on the road. Every time I do, my heart says, "HI Max!" For a split second in time, we're connected again. I relish it.

There will come a time when this won't be as common an occurrence, I know. And I dread that inevitability. But until then, every red Cavalier circa 1999 or thereabouts that I encounter brings me comfort.

I miss my son in ways I am incapable of expressing.

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A Sunday In Columbus

2/27/2016

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I had some time to kill last Sunday afternoon in Columbus. The day was uncharacteristically warm and sunny for this time of the year, so I decided to do my favorite free activity (hint: geocaching) in a big old cemetery near OSU. The cache I was looking for was hidden in the section dedicated to children. "Babyland Lane" Oof.

I spent some time visiting the grave markers of these children, thinking about their parents and noting how old they were when they died and how long it has been since then. (Everyone does this, right? Yeah, probably not. But I do.)

I was getting closer to where the cache was hidden when a young woman arrived and walked over to one of the tiny stones. It already had a lot of decorations surrounding it. She waved to me; I waved back. I didn't want to intrude on her moment with her child, and I didn't want her to see me look for the cache, so that's when I sat behind a tree and sobbed. (Ugly cry sobbed. Snorting, snotty sobbed. Puffy eyes, the whole works. I'm a hot mess.) I heard music. I think she might have been singing.

After awhile, I realized she was gone, so I quickly found the cache where I knew it was hidden. Lots of times with these things, you leave a trinket and take one, but this one was too small for that, so I still had a trinket in my pocket. One the way back to my car, I stopped at her child's grave. Stuck in the ground next to a bunch of flowers was still smoldering incense. It was beautiful and tragic. I placed my trinket -- a clear glass gem -- next to the incense.

He was almost 3 months old when he died last August. His name is Ethan.

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Spilt Milk: a reflective essay about the unkind things people tend to say to the bereaved

2/27/2016

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“There is no use in crying over spilt milk,” the saying goes. Other versions go further: “Don’t cry,” we’re admonished. The origin of this phrase is unclear, but after being in English usage for over 300 years, it’s a deeply ingrained cultural cliché warning people not to express grief for things which cannot be changed. We’re not ever told the reason why it’s unwise to cry over spilt milk, just warned not to do it. Perhaps the admonition is intended more for the person saying it than it is for the recipient. In other words, saying “Don’t cry over spilt milk” is more akin to saying, “Stop talking about that because your grief makes me uncomfortable.” Americans, as a whole, are intensely uncomfortable with public grief. If we’re ever going to get serious about mental health as a culture, we need to get over our fear of grief and start having productive conversations. It’s time to put away the trite clichés.

My life changed instantly on the afternoon of October 17, 2012 when a solemn-faced white-coated doctor and his nurse assistant entered the private ICU waiting room at Akron General Hospital where my husband Roger and I waited anxiously for news of our son. “I’m sorry…” he began. I don’t remember much of anything else after that except for the wailing, the high-pitched terrifying death scream that filled the room and paralyzed me. It wasn’t until later that I realized the source of the shrieking was me.

And with that, I joined the ranks of parents of dead children.

Of course, there’s more to the story than that. The story actually began the day before, a picture-perfect fall Tuesday when I witnessed the aftermath of the accident between the semi-truck and the compact car my son drove, when I watched in silent horror as the rescue workers struggled for 20 minutes to free him from his crushed metal prison: the jaws of life ripping the roof off, the metal-cutting saw chewing through the floorboard to free his legs, his lifeless body slumping sideways out of his seat. I noted every detail from the chopping whir of the helicopter to the paramedic straddling my son’s body while doing chest compressions to restart his heart. My brain recorded it all and filed it away.

For weeks after Maxwell’s death, I didn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, and when I did, my dreams were filled with blood and gore. After that came the panic attacks. Any loud noise or anything startling could trigger them. The flashbacks were the worst, and I never knew when they would happen. I could be in the middle of making dinner, for instance, when something would switch in my brain, and suddenly I was back at the accident scene, reliving the nightmare. Weeks turned into months; months turned into a year. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t go anywhere without intense fear, I couldn’t keep food down. I wanted to die.

In the early days of my grief, friends and neighbors were eager to help. They raised money for the funeral and memorial grave stone, delivered food and supplies, and entertained my surviving children. The initial support was beautiful, but I quickly learned that after about two weeks post-funeral, no one wanted to talk about my dead son and how his absence had permanently altered the landscape of my family. I can still remember the first time someone tried to comfort me with trite words, “You must be strong for your other kids” and “He’s in a better place now.”

When it comes to death, with few exceptions, there are two kinds of people: those who say nothing and those who say too much. The first group wants to avoid being reminded about death, so they tiptoe around the subject altogether. Because they don’t want to make the grieving person feel worse, and they think that saying anything will hurt, they opt to say nothing. Others would say something if they only knew what to say. I’ve learned that the people who get stricken looks on their faces when I mention my son Maxwell tend to belong to this first group.

The second group of people say all the wrong things. These people can only make sense of senseless tragedy through the liberal use of platitudes. These are the people who remind me to be thankful for the children I do have and not dwell on the one that died. Sometimes these people like to remind me that this is all part of God’s plan and that my son is in a better place now. In all cases, it’s neither helpful nor appropriate to suggest a solution for my grief. You can’t fix death, you can’t erase my pain, and it’s simply not kind to even try to.

In her book Sunrise Tomorrow (1988, p. 96), Elizabeth Brown suggests that these kinds of responses are as old as the Bible. When the patriarch Job experienced the terrible tragedy of the deaths of his entire family, his friends came to sit and grieve with him. For seven days, they wailed along with him, but after a week of mourning, they were ready to move on. Ostensibly trying to help him, instead they heaped criticism and judgment on him. Job’s friends essentially told him that how he was grieving was wrong.

Clearly the bereaved need to speak about their loss, and they need safe people who will listen to them without judgment or ridicule. They want to talk about what happened and what the loss means to them. Telling their stories is one way to healing, and listening to their stories with compassion is a precious gift that costs the giver nothing but some time. The Dougy Center, a national support organization for grieving children and families, has published a “Bill of Rights for Grieving Teens” (n.d.). Though aimed at young people, the list includes wisdom for bereaved people of any age. For instance, a grieving person has the right “to be heard with dignity and respect,” “to not have to follow the ‘Stages of Grief’ as outlined in a high school health book,” and “to grieve in one’s own unique, individual way without censorship” (para. 1).

At the end of one perfectly ordinary day in my life as a bereaved mother of three plus years – which is mostly to say I did my daily work and didn't break down into tears – I happened to glance at the back of the head of one of my surviving sons while he was playing a video game with his younger brother, and suddenly I was seeing Maxwell just like it was yesterday doing the exact same thing. The pain of missing him is always there and usually just throbs like a really deep purple and yellow bruise, but when it unexpectedly pierces like that, out of the blue...I can't breathe.

Perhaps one day our society will evolve to the point where the free and public expression of grief is no longer met with platitudes and condemnation. Perhaps instead of saying, “Don’t cry over spilt milk,” we’ll learn instead to say, “I’m sorry for your pain.” If we can do that, we will invariably make the world a better place for both the bereaved and non-bereaved alike.

References
Brown, E. B. (1988). Sunrise tomorrow. Old Tappan, NJ: Revell.

The Dougy Center. (n.d.). Bill of rights | grief resources | the Dougy center. Retrieved February 7, 2016, from http://www.dougy.org/grief-resource...

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Thanksgiving

11/27/2013

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Driving home tonight, I passed a car much like the one my son used to drive. (This happens a lot. Who knew that the red Cavalier circa 1999 is a popular car in this part of Ohio?) I scrutinized the driver; I always do.

"Maybe it will be Max", my irrational heart thought. (Of course it wasn't. It never is. I know he's dead. I'm not crazy.)

Then I asked God to protect that young man on the drive to his destination so that his mother would never know the pain of losing him.

(Holidays are hard for bereaved parents. If you have one in your life, please read this powerful essay.)

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.

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Light in the darkness

Another anniversary

October is gunning for me

Music triggers

Spring Rites

Pain

Hi Max!

A Sunday In Columbus

Spilt Milk: a reflective essay about the unkind things people tend to say to the bereaved

Thanksgiving

Who's that?

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