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A Mother's personal story about the loss of a child
Chapter 1
I
WON’T FORGET
Some come through this “baptism of fire” complete and whole.
Somewhere in the process, they have pulled against a deep core and in the
doing they know that they can face anything.
They know that nothing can be their undoing because they have faced
their ultimate challenge and
survived. They know they will heal. They found a process that worked
for them. They found the
central beam, perhaps the
construction of what they are.
They will survive any obstacle because they found the process of
surviving and that process can be repeated if necessary.
Not only are they stronger spiritually, but they have more
understanding of their spiritual heritage.
Of this I am sure. It
is our destiny that the process of surviving and evolving be learned.
At the beginning of
Lent my 21 year old nephew died, and at the end of
Lent my 16 year old son died and was buried.
In retrospect, I think there was a message in all of this somehow,
since the backdrop of the events was Christ’s passion and death and the
two boys shared the same name.
There were so many other events and time markers at this point of
my life, that I didn’t feel these events were accidental.
There was somewhat a sense that I was following a script.
When my nephew died, I thought I understood the parents’ pain because
I was a parent. I grieved for
them, commiserated with them.
Regardless of what you think,
I can assure you that you know nothing about an event until it
happens to you. Even though I
thought I understood, I knew nothing about the death of a child until my
child died. No matter how much compassion I shared with the family, I
didn’t really understand what the loss of a child meant until I had to
live every day of my life carrying that same loss.
Clothed as each
participant during some time of its experience, the soul moves through
every possibility and shading of every conceivable joy and sorrow. Would
the need to examine specific experiences be interrelated to our actions
from the current or distant past?
Perhaps it is only
then, when we truly understand every event and relationship, are we able
to make the choices necessary for soul growth.
Unless we have gone through every conceivable pain, perhaps then
only, are we able to see the wisdom of positive action and the joy of what
love brings.
If soul growth is a
matter of choices, it appears to me that our choices need to be evaluated
against a dichotomy of events.
How can we truly chose in wisdom unless we understand what our
choices mean in relationship to experience?
I don’t know why
the eternal part of me needed to experience and examine the death of a
child, but I know on some level there is a part of me that has overcome
and in some fashion is stronger than before.
Maybe the eternal
part of me has examined, calculated and absorbed the experience, but the
human, emotional side of me has suffered a loss that cannot be
extinguished. There is a
flame in the belly that burns and will not be put out until I can see my
son again and we can experience together once more.
There is much pain in the separation from those you love.
Even today 15years
after the event and all the experiences that have happened to me between
that event and today, I cannot write about this time in my life without a
great deal of sorrow.
Besides being my
son, Shawn was my friend. I
remember calling him that sometimes, Hey friend! There is an acceptance
between friends that transcends the relationship of parent and child.
It was a satisfying relationship. He was my friend as well as being
my son.
Life does not
prepare you to have your child die before you.
As a parent, you expect to die before your child.
It is almost as if life made a pact with you that you should die
before your children. It is
unthinkable to a mother that this process should ever be reversed.
Shawn was growing
up during a period of time when young men liked to wear their hair long,
and Shawn at 16 wanted his hair long.
Coming from a rather conventional thinking family myself, it was
hard for me to agree to men in the family having long hair.
I could remember my
daughter as a toddler, sitting in a grocery cart seat, asking me if that
was a Mommie or Daddy when a man walked by sporting a pony tail. That was sort of the way I saw people too, long hair meant
that you were a woman and short meant that you were a man. Anything else was confusing.
However, Shawn was
rather adamant in that he wanted long hair.
I finally told him he could have long hair if he kept it clean. And he did indeed keep it clean.
He washed it every day. When I think of him, the first thing that
comes to my mind is a picture of Shawn and his thick wavy hair with golden
highlights moving in the wind.
He used to take long strides because even though he was only 16, he
was over 6 foot tall and rather lanky, and the sun would shine through his
hair and it would move with him like it was dancing in the sun.
When you do not
have someone in your life that you want in your life, it seems that you
remember unimportant, maybe to the world insignificant things they did,
and suddenly these events become important things to remember and cherish.
Perhaps because at 16 there is not a lot that someone can
accomplish according to the world’s standards.
At 16 you are just starting to dream, or maybe know what dreams
are, accomplishments come later.
I think about that
sometimes. There was an
adolescent crush or two, but he did not find the love of his life
yet. He didn’t have a
chance to partake of some of the promises of life.
I wondered what his family would be like, my grandchildren perhaps.
I didn’t find out
about the mashed potato fight in the kitchen until years later.
At the time of the happening, everything was cleaned up before I
got home. I was working at
the time and everyone took turns with jobs. My daughter Ginny cooked that
day. Shawn pealed an enormous pot of potatoes for mashed potatoes. He could never get enough.
No one wanted to peal all those potatoes and mash them, so Shawn
would do that job.
There was some
bickering going on between some of the children and the fight started with
one little fork of mashed potatoes being flung across the kitchen and
hitting Shawn in the face.
From what I gathered, there was a free for all after that.
There was mashed potatoes everywhere.
Shawn liked plenty of milk and butter in his potatoes so they were
rather splatable. Luckily the
kitchen cabinets and floor were scrubbed before I saw them.
These are the sort
of events families reminisce about when they gather at Christmas dinners,
graduations, marriages, births, etc. When these events concern your son
who has died, a mother has to muse over these happenings privately,
because for the most part, others feel uncomfortable talking about such
things and won’t join in.
Most people do not
know how to treat death because it is so final, and there is nothing that
you can do about it. There is a loss of companionship of the loved one and
that causes pain. As a
general rule we really don’t know what happens to the person after the
event we call death. We were told as a child, perhaps through our
religious affiliation, “the official interpretation”, as to what they
think happens after death, but we don’t have any first hand information
until the event touches our lives in some manner.
Death is something that we seem to want to forget because we are
afraid of the unknown. If we
do not talk about it maybe it will go away, but sometimes it doesn’t go
away.
After Shawn died,
there were so many probably insignificant events I lovingly relived and
cherished because there would be no future history in my daily life
between Shawn and myself again. Besides the loss of companionship, there
is great pain knowing that other events like those you cherished would not
come into reality again in this lifetime.
I remembered the
flowers he gave me, and the Christmas presents he selected and purchased
with his own money. I could recall his visits to his grandparents’ and how
he delighted them by negotiating a purchase for a toy when he was three
years old. His purchase was made in a toy shop in Philadelphia, the “City
of Brotherly Love” . The shopkeeper sold him a toy for less than what it
cost, because Shawn didn’t have much money in his pocket.
Shawn had a very
winsome way about him, and I guess the shopkeeper must have loved children
too. Shawn had that
mischievous look about him, but with a twinkle in his eye.
God, I loved that child!
I remember how he
told his Grandfather that he wanted to drive the car.
His Grandfather would put Shawn on his lap and Shawn would put his
hands in the steering wheel thinking he was driving the car.
Grandfather said he would work the petals. Of course, Grandma
didn’t think that was such a great idea.
But there were some things grandchildren were allowed to do no
matter what.
When someone you
love has left you, you think of them in little vignettes, not big stories.
Events jump around in your mind, there is no continuity.
Maybe you found a paper that reminds you of their school, or an old
picture that brings memories streaming through.
This, what I call
musing, never goes away. The
mind can be triggered by the most insignificant stimulus, a big bowl of
mashed potatoes, a long rope, pieces of straw. However, as time passes,
and the pain of loss is tempered, you can start remembering the fun times
again.
We went skiing in
New England one time and he loved jumping over moguls on the ski run. Moguls are irregular bumps or small hills that need
negotiating skill to ski around or jump over. Shawn was not one who would
let the good times end, and he tried building moguls in the snow on a hill
in back of our house when we returned home. He was such a fun loving guy.
Whatever he was doing, he really got into it with his whole self.
Halloween can’t
pass without me reminiscing about the haunted house he put together in our
barn. The plan was that the
neighborhood children were to go through a dark maize with dim lights
illuminating scary masks, pass gloopy glop that looked like blood rolling
down ghouls, unmentionable things that would jump out behind bales of hay.
This was usually Shawn and a friend of his dressed in scary, realistic
looking masks. I don’t know where he got his hands on such disreputable
looking clothes for the costume. At the end of the tour, to get by, one
had to push aside a big piece of raw liver hanging on a string.
The girls must of loved that one. I can just hear them now.
Oh! I almost forgot, you had to do this blindfolded when you got to
the liver action. Shawn
charged 5 cents for a trip through the concoction, and the crowds came
from long distances to see it.
It took weeks of
preparation before Halloween, but it kept them busy. The project fulfilled
a mothers dream, something wholesome to keep the little buggers busy and
out of trouble.
Then there was the
tree house. I don’t know
where they found all the lumber and plywood. Shawn and his friends took
everyone of his father’s nails from his workshop for that project.
Sometimes fathers don’t understand that a kid has to do what a kid has to
do. They were looking for carpeting, but before they could complete the
project, the big kids tore the tree fort apart, confiscated nails and all.
For a while there was a tug of war between the big kids and our
guys as the tree house went up and down, but the big guys eventually won.
There are still some
remnants in the tree and whenever the leaves fall from the trees, I can
see the surviving boards looking like some ghost ship surfacing from a
forest of trees instead of a sea of waves. There is something forlorn and
spooky about it because there are no human sounds coming from the dying
wreck. It appears to me to be
one of the signs of passage from childhood to adulthood, except one of the
passengers did not make the passage to adulthood.
As a mother, I
can’t help thinking of all those unfilled, promises of possibilities. He had so many good traits, so much talent.
To me, he was a good person, is a good person.
Why did he come only to leave at 16?
At Shawn’s funeral
I had so many tormenting questions and raw pain. So many people came and
unknowingly gave me answers.
It got to the point that I started looking for the answers to be
presented.
I looked into the
face of a woman perhaps in her 60s or 70s as she told me about her child.
She described her infant’s big dark eyes in such a manner, that I
felt at that moment that I was looking deeply into them myself.
He died of some childhood disease.
She was so
distraught. She loved her
child, and she only had him with her for three years before he died. She
tried to take her life by throwing herself in front of a trolley car.
Emotionally, I could see the tracks and picture her near brush with
death.
I could certainly
identify with this woman. And
after all those years, her memories were just as sharp as they were when
the events happened. It was if the events that she was recounting happened
yesterday.
I was reminded at
that moment that at least I did have Shawn with me for 16 years. I had something precious and I had to be thankful for Shawn’s
time with me as it was a gift.
Indeed, I had always looked at my children as not truly belonging
to me. God had loaned them to
me for awhile. They were put
in my care so that I could teach them what I knew, and give them an assist
so they could live their lives as independent, as whole as possible,
adults. Even though I knew I had to accept Shawn’s short stay with me, it
didn’t lessen the pain.
During his wake
there was music piped in very softly.
It was of his favorite noise-making groups “Rush”.
I never appreciated that music blaring through amplifiers and
rattling the windows while Shawn played “air guitar”. But softly, quietly,
the words and music took on new dimensions.
I have to say that I liked it.
Music notes expressing a phrase in a song “I will be free as the
wind” is on his stone marking the place where his body rests where indeed
he is free as the wind.
I want you to know
that the pain I have been speaking of is very real to the bereaved. I am not using that word pain in a figurative manner.
It is like a dark heavy cloud and it presses down on you so that
sometimes you don’t feel that you are getting enough air. The only time
this pain leaves is when you sleep, or when you manage to fall off to
sleep. However, then the bad
dreams take over filling your nights with anxious races.
You know neither the pursuer nor the destination.
Upon awakening, as I move towards consciousness, there is a second
of orientation and like hot
burning liquid pouring over me comes the realization that my son has just
died.
I couldn’t stand
for the days to pass because each day meant that the separation between my
son and myself was getting wider.
He fell off this ship of life somewhere and I clutched for his hand
and I couldn’t find it. As
the seasons changed, we were getting further apart from one another.
I wanted to go back and find him, but our passage was in opposite
directions, and I suffered because of this and I could do nothing. I was moving against my will, away from him, a prisoner in
life.
I was in the house
in one of those particularly difficult moments.
I couldn’t breathe. I
had to get outside and get some air or suffocate.
I pushed out the back door and leaned against it panting and
crying, and there was as if peace surrounded me immediately.
It was as if Shawn were there with his arms around me and I leaned
against his chest and he told me not to cry.
If it wasn’t for
the emotional charge of love and peace, I would have thought that my mind
was playing tricks on me. I
stood there soaking in the minute savoring what I thought was a contact
with him. At that moment I
knew that some part of his personality was there in some form.
I couldn’t see him, but I heard distinctly as if he whispered in my
ear, don’t cry mom. There was
emotion without words. I gave
and I accepted. I don’t know
how long I stood there, but when the emotions passed, I came back into the
house.
When I was a child
my mother told me a story of my grandmother’s death.
In her time it was customary for the dead to be put in a casket and
placed in the living room until burial, where friends could come and give
the family their respects. I don’t know when funeral homes came into
vogue, but my mother told me the custom in this neighborhood was for the
dead to be laid out in their home.
The milkman would
walk through the neighborhoods with a horse drawn cart ringing a bell
alerting his customers that he was in their neighborhood.
The homemakers would answer the summons if they needed milk that
day, take their pail to the milkman and he would fill it.
It would be interesting to know how much milk cost then without
modern packaging and regulation. It had to taste better without all the
butterfat taken out.
As the story goes,
my grandmother, in a stupor, got out of the casket and retrieved her pail
and went out to the milkman and bought milk. Like the story of Lazarus in
the bible, there are no reports of the expressions on people’s faces or
what they said when someone rose from the dead or what my grandmother said
it was like to raise from the dead. There was no in-depth reporters on the
scene to get all the details, no television cameras, no 60 Minutes
programming, no Huntley-Brinkley, or Dan Rather.
In my grandmother’s
day, it seems that there was an influenza flu epidemic and physicians did
not hear the very shallow breathing of my grandmother and perhaps other
individuals like her. Perhaps
she was in a type of catatonic state, and thank heavens, revived before
burial. It is a good thing
for me because this happened before my mother was born.
When you tell this
story there is a type of humor to it, but the thought of it caused me
great anxiety. I had horrible
nightmares of my son reviving in the casket underground and I wouldn’t
know to help rescue him. This
fear was inside of me and I couldn’t let it go.
I couldn’t express it to anyone because I was afraid of being
ridiculed, and somehow I couldn’t let it go past my lips.
I finally told my husband and he explained my fear to the
undertaker and compassionately, the undertaker told me about the fact that
modern embalming came about because it was society’s way of dealing with
this problem. He offered me
the use of some of his books to help satisfy my mind.
His reassurance was enough to settle my mind on this question.
I did not have to think of the unspeakable again.
Everyone has a very
distinct way of grieving, of handling the transitions of death and dying.
I remember during Shawn’s wake I went to the basement of the funeral home
to use the rest room and there was a group of people having a shot of Jack
Daniels bourbon and listening to the music of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”.
The widow told me that her husband didn’t want his family or
friends to grieve when he left them and this was one of his last requests.
This is how he wanted to be remembered. I started talking to this woman
because it seemed that her son was a classmate of Shawn’s.
In seems that in some ways our lives are all intertwined with one
another. There they all were, trying to do what their husband/father
wanted them to do.
I had to be as
brave as this family. I
reminded myself that example
is such a very strong teacher, and one deed is worth several thousand
words. We are all very
vulnerable to example and perhaps sometimes we need to evaluate what we
teach through our example. It
appears to me that what seems very casual to ourselves can be very
impressionable to someone else.
Maybe we learn true wisdom from others.
The laying to rest
of my loved one took so long because there could be no funerals from our
church on the weekend before Easter.
We had a wake, a Funeral Mass, back to the funeral home, a service
before burial at the funeral home, and then that day that I knew I
couldn’t get through, the day we placed our son in the ground.
Going into the Church for the funeral, I
followed my daughter. As she
approached the steps, her shoulders drooped and looked like they would
crumble. It reminded me of
someone taking a dead leaf and crumbling it in their hand before dropping
it to the ground. I came up
to her and whispered in her ear, Michele, we will grieve tomorrow. Today,
we will celebrate what Shawn was. This is in his honor.
It was as if someone pulled the strings on a resting marionette and
all the parts came to life in harmony, working as a unit tall and straight
as she walked into the church.
All the family had a part in the service.
Each one of us had something special to read, sing, or play that
had great meaning to them.
I read about Children from the “Prophet” by Kahlil Gibron. It was one of my favorite poems and I believed the sentiment.
It said something about your children being the arrows in your
quiver and shooting them forth in the world.
Cousins near the same age as Shawn picked the music and played it.
I can still see my niece Laurie singing “Suddenly” and Bridge Over
Troubled Waters. Whenever I hear any of the music it reminds me that we
were telling the world that Shawn was something special to all of us and
he will not be forgotten. Under Grace © 1991
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