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Sparkle (2)
Nothing sparks a reaction like hearing about the death of a child. And if you spend any time reading blogs (as I'm sure you do), it's hard not to think about how often it happens. We want it to be rare, so rare. But there are too many stories out there that prove it's not.
A child's death creates complicated reactions, from everyone. I wrote about watching the Twitter community react after Anna See's son was lost in Hurricane Irene's flash floods. And Anna continues to write beautifully, achingly, about what she is going through, and how she is working to turn the pain into affirmation about all she believes about life and faith.
So I was intrigued when I stumbled across this pair of blog posts, written by friends, about the two sides of grief: the one the mother endures, and the one the friends of the mother endures. There is so much that's different between the two, but in each case, we read about how we are afraid of those feelings, afraid of the loss: Not the mother; she has no choice. But she gets exposed to the ways that everyone else wants to hurry her along. And then the rest of us try to shoo! shoo! shoo! away the specter that this could happen in our life, too.
These posts offer no answers—which, to me, is exactly right—but I wanted to share bits of them here so they could stir your thoughts, too. Be sure to click over to read each post in full.
Birthday Reflections Around Daniel's Grave
My eyes filled with tears as I continued my walk [around Markham Memorial Gardens, where I was visiting Daniel's Place]. All these years, I’d felt misunderstood. I had let others try to push aside my love, which of course, comes with sadness from missing my child. I had grimaced when well-meaning folk tried to make light of my sorrow by saying I would see Daniel again in Heaven, and then felt guilty for not letting that knowledge make me want to smile.
Seeing Daniel again on earth is what I wanted. I wanted him here, growing up with my other children. I wanted my oldest, who remembers him best, to be able to have Daniel as her sibling. The two younger children had never known him and they had missed out on a funny, sweet boy who was generous in his care for others. I wanted to watch him blow out the candles on his fifth birthday cake, his tenth, his sixteenth, and his cake today. Telling me not to miss him because I’ll see him again in Heaven was missing the point. I will not be his mother in Heaven, making him grilled cheese sandwiches, buying him Cocoa Puffs, and listening to his accounts of his first day of high school or college…
Read the rest of Alice's post about her son and her grief at It Is What It Is.
Our Angels
Each time I took my daughter for a walk in her stroller, I avoided walking past the cemetery in our neighborhood because I didn't want to see the angel. I knew its wings would beckon to me, and while it might sound superstitious, I didn't want my daughter anywhere near its cold marble arms stretched out in welcome.
I'd heard on the news how the angel memorial statue and its neighboring wall of names had been erected in honor of deceased and missing children. I knew it was a special place. To some it was even sacred; a place where grieving parents could go to remember their angels. I didn't belong there. I wasn’t a grieving parent.
My own daughter was alive, healthy, and thriving. However, I did know of a baby whose name was now on that wall and as I avoided the turn to the cemetery each day, his memory rose up to remind me of how precious he was—still is—to his parents. I never held him, only cooed over him and touched his sweet face each time his mother, with a sleep-deprived smile, dropped him off at my daughter’s daycare each morning. He was the baby brother of my daughter's daycare friend and it had been a shock when I heard how he passed away from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
As I thought of those devastated parents, my heart ached for them; but ultimately my thoughts settled not only on their grief, but on my daughter. Still a toddler at two years old, what would I do if I ever lost her? This sadness for a fellow mom's loss and how it made me worry about my own child is what made me avoid the cemetery's memorial each time I took my child for a walk. Until…
Read the rest of Tina's post at It Is What It Is.
