Words for the Journey

Easter Mourning and ElephantsPastel colors, daffodils, shiny new shoes, hats with yellow ribbons, white belts, hugs, hardboiled eggs and bunnies; the hams in the oven and the songbirds are chirping  it is Easter morning…but for some it’s also an Easter mourning. 

Like many children, I was under the impression growing up that Home would forever exist as I knew it - a stationary, unchanging bubble of safety to welcome me back any time I needed.

At first, grief closes our eyes,Then it blackens the skies.There is no light to show,No path you know to go.Then a small star shines bright,A speck of warmth in the cold of night.And on that lonely star,

“Mom, when I turn 18 I'm going to get a tattoo!” Hannah announced.“Hannah, what would you possibly want permanently inked on your body that you won't be embarrassed about when you're 80??”

In The Beginning“My reason, judgment and all my defenses have dissolved, leaving me confused and terrified in a world suddenly turned strange.”“He is like a beggar in winter, clawing through box after box of old coats, looking for one that fits.” Tom Crider:Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage Through Grief(1996)  

I am not one to reach out to people for help, ever.  I am the person people come to when they need help.  I’ve always been the go – to person.  Suddenly, I found myself at the other end and I could not ask for help.There is so much you can do to help someone who has experienced a loss.  For me, delivering our daughter stillborn has been the most horrific thing I’ve ever faced

Only one now holds the wishes, hopes and dreams that belonged to a couple.  Homes to build, trips to take, children to raise, that once were a couples plan are now the plan of one.  Why do widows stay up at night? We’re attempting to recreate a world we believed we had for a lifetime. Nothing is the same and everything, everything has changed. 

The morning after my first session of a grief support group.I had wanted to stay at home in bed all day, but I couldn’t.  I had two children to take to school and a paycheck to earn.   I had awakened that morning with a horrible headache, a dark depression and a deep despair that was worse than I had ever experienced. 

"Men grieve far more than we show or discuss."The first thing women should know about male grief is that we have a lot of it. It is pushed into many darkened corners of our lives. We try to stay very, very busy.We hurt when our children leave home. In one fashion or another, we helped build that emptying nest.

Many types of bereavement go unrecognised, but few will cause people to look at you as if you’ve just arrived from the nearest planet with an extra-terrestrial population. That is a particular problem for people who have experienced the loss of somebody they only knew online. There is a definite tendency to think that the nature of online relationships makes them somehow less worthy of recognition and mourning when people we have known through those means pass away. 

Sweet Serenity: What I Know For SureBy C.S. Lockley