When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan

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Many of us like to be in control. Or at least in control of our own lives and our hopes and dreams.

But even if we’ve carefully calculated the course of our life and worked hard to let no details slip through the cracks, we still encounter times when our lives simply don’t go according to plan.

Most often, these “hiccups” in life are disappointing or even hurtful, but most are not insurmountable. For example, when a marriage ends in divorce it may bring a level of pain and regret that feels like you won’t ever recover from it, and yet most people do pick up the pieces of a broken heart and go on to find love again.

Perhaps, as in my case, you unexpectedly get laid off from a job that you’ve put your heart and soul into for years. You may find yourself feeling hurt and betrayed. And in the difficult position of having to scramble to find a new job before the next round of bills are due. You may have to reevaluate your career path or even your lifestyle, but I’ve heard countless stories where someone lost a job and then went on to find a better one. That’s been the case for me in the past.

So what do you do when you encounter a major roadblock in life?

Some people refuse to give up on their previous plans, and charge forward come hell or high water. That’s great for them, but some of us don’t have the resources or personality needed to do that. Some people seemingly give up and descend into a personal prison of hopelessness. They tend to withdraw from life and some choose unhealthy ways to escape from the pain.

Most of us find ourselves somewhere in the middle. We still have dreams, but may find ourselves having to rethink the shape, size and scope of them. Some of us may surprisingly come to the realization that our previous plans were actually keeping us in unhealthy or limiting situations…so we make new plans. Chances are if you look back on your life to see where you’ve encountered roadblocks and where your new path led you to; you may actually be quite pleased.

But sometimes, life’s roadblocks are so devastating; we simply cannot see a way forward. Most often, this happens when you lose someone that you’ve built your life – or your identity – around.

In these cases many of us find ourselves frozen in feelings of anger or despair and are unable to comprehend our life without our loved one in it. Some of us simply refuse to accept this new reality and isolate ourselves and withdraw from the “regular” world. We resentfully think that if life isn’t going to go according to our plans, then we refuse to participate in it until it does. That’s a nice thought, but life often has a habit of ignoring our demands. Especially if we simply cannot undo what has already been done – in this case, the death of a loved one.

I found myself in this situation after the sudden death of my 4-year-old daughter, Margareta.

Unlike losing my job, where I can simply look for a new – and even better – one, there was nothing I could do to turn the death of my daughter into a better situation. I couldn’t replace my daughter with a new one. (And for those who have ever insensitively told a bereaved parent that they should just have another child…next time, please do all of us a favor and keep your thoughts to yourself.) I couldn’t pretend that I’d ever find that elusive “closure” that many people talk about, but doesn’t exist in these types of situations.

I was hopelessly, utterly lost and didn’t know what to do or which way to turn. And yet, as it always does, life moved on whether I liked it or not. It moved forward without my daughter in it. I was desperately trying to find a way to keep one foot in the world where my daughter was still alive, while keeping the other foot in the present day world where my other children still resided. I don’t advise anyone to try this…it simply does not work.

So here I was, forced to make new plans; plans that did not include my daughter growing up and living a full life.

I hated it. I resented it. To this day, I still regret it and probably always will. Yet I am forced to live it. And I suspect that many of you reading this are forced to live with that reality too.

The fact is I have made new plans. These plans will never be the ones I truly want, because they will never include my daughter alive in them.

But they try to make the best of an impossible situation. They try to honor her life while honoring the fact that I’m still alive and so is the rest of my family. They will always include sadness and regret intermixed with hope and joy.

And I know whatever my plans may be; they are always subject to change…because life has a habit of sometimes getting in the way.

Grieving a Future I’ll Never Have

Grieving a Future I’ll Never Have

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When grief is new, it is excruciating and overwhelming. Many people get stuck in a quicksand of pain that is so thick and intense, it feels impossible to escape. You can’t imagine how you’ll survive as you struggle through those first few days, weeks, and months.

And yet you do survive. Despite all odds, you wake up each morning. Your body still functions. You find a way to quietly camoflauge yourself within with the “normal” world around you. You learn to live one day at a time. One moment at a time when the day is particularly hard.

Slowly – and painfully – you begin to acclimate to a world without your loved one in it. You do it because you have no other choice.

Over five years after the death of my 4-year-old daughter, Margareta, I’ve acclimated as best I can. I’ve continually faced and dealt with those painful feelings and emotions using every tool I can think of. Writing about my grief helps immensely. I go to grief support groups and talk to a grief counselor when I feel the need to. I talk about Margareta with those who want to hear. I’ve come to terms with the impossible reality that she is gone and never coming back.

My grief over my daughter’s death will never go away. Ask any grieving parent and they’ll tell you the same.

We’ll never “get over it.” What we have to do is accept it and learn how to live life despite of it. I’ve heard some bereaved parents don’t like using the word acceptance. That is because they associate the notion of accepting their child’s death with being okay with their child’s death. But you can accept the reality of something without ever being happy about it; without ever being okay with it. You can’t change the past, so you might as well accept it in order to begin to be able to heal from the devastation you find yourself in.

I have healed a lot over the years. The open, oozing, excruciating wound of my broken heart has since scabbed over. I’ll always have the painful scar that reminds me throughout every day that my daughter isn’t here. It’s that constant reminder that is the hardest for me now.

I’m grieving a future I’ll never have. I’m reminded every day of what could have been, but can never be.

I’m grieving lost hopes and dreams. And the loss of my only daughter and the mother-daughter relationship I only had a glimpse of. Instead of the intense, searing pain of early grief, it has transformed into a dull ache I’ll never escape from.

I don’t think I’ll ever feel fully at ease with this constant ache. I’ll always miss my daughter. I’ll always regret that I didn’t get to watch her grow. But I’m dedicated to learning how to live a happy, meaningful life despite of it. I do this in her honor and in the honor of my other children, husband, and family. I do it because I didn’t physically die when she did.

In her four short years, my daughter lived life to the fullest – full of love, honesty and without fear. It is now my goal in life to do the same. I know she would have wanted it that way.

Distance in Grief

Distance in Grief

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“Time heals all wounds.”

I’m certain you’ve heard that saying. It’s a nice thought. But the truth is not so simple and clean cut as that. It makes me think whoever coined the phrase hadn’t yet suffered the devastating loss of a loved one that both shatters and redefines the world you live in.

Another new year was ushered in this past week. It will be another year that my daughter did not live to see. An unwelcome reminder that she has been gone for more years than she lived to experience. It takes me further away from her. Further from her birth, her short life, and the impossible moment of her death.

It is distance.

Distance is a difficult concept to grasp or explain in the context of grief.

It is both good and bad at the same time. Both painful and liberating. It can both soften your devastation while solidifying the difficult reality of loss.

It can help close the door to the agony of early grief, just as it unearths new aspects of grief that you hadn’t expected. And weren’t altogether ready for.

I am thankful for the distance between where I am now and the horror of the day my daughter drowned.

I no longer fear that if I close my eyes I might be forced to recall and relive the worst day of my life. I’m no longer a complete wreck who can’t manage basic functions in the world around me. I am no longer at the mercy of uncontrollable waves of emotion that might leave me a crying, angry, trembling mess for the majority of the day.

But it isn’t just distance. It is distance combined with hard work. If I had not acknowledged my grief or faced my emotions head on, I might still be trapped in a web of despair concealed by numbness. I might have completely cut myself off from any meaningful interaction with life. Or swallowed my pain and pushed it so deep that it transformed itself into a devastating and debilitating illness.

Time alone does not heal all wounds. Time just gives you more opportunities to work through your pain…or to find new ways to try to hide from it.

Distance has given me perspective. The perspective that the four years I did get to spend with my daughter is much more than those who are denied the opportunity to have children in the first place. Or those who lose children before they even take their first breath. And while I am forever grateful for having more than a few days, weeks, or months with her, distance also makes me envious of those who got to spend more time – even decades – with their children.

Four years worth of memories of my daughter don’t add up to much. I don’t have a treasure trove of stories to tell. The milestones are limited and weren’t cataloged all that well to begin with. After all, I was expecting a lifetime of them. She didn’t have friends, lovers, or children who will remember her in perpetuity. Her brothers were too young to remember most of the time they spent with her.

All those everyday moments I took for granted are eroding away on the treacherous path of distance. Details are being lost to time. My mind tries to fill in the gaps based on pictures or conjecture, but it only serves to make me question the validity of those memories I once felt so sure of.

When memories are all you have left, distance becomes your enemy…and a new form of grief.

I don’t know what distance has in store for me. Each passing day, week, month and year seem to bring new healing and personal growth. For that I am truly grateful. But it is always with an undertow of longing. I suppose it is representative of life itself. With love comes pain. With pain comes understanding. Understanding leads to growth. Personal growth brings wisdom, purpose, and fulfillment.

I suppose if I am forced to live the rest of my life without watching my daughter grow, I will continue to try to grow and thrive in her honor. From that perspective, I can’t wait to see what the future will bring.

Looking for the Silver Lining After the Death of a Child

Looking for the Silver Lining After the Death of a Child

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Recently, several people have made me think about what it really means when we talk about the “silver lining” in relation to the death of a child.

After the death of a child, parents find themselves in the depths of despair and suffocated by overwhelming pain. In desperation, many reach out to find support from others who’ve already been through it. Or they spend countless hours reading articles and stories that show them there is hope. They want to know there is a way out of the worst pain imaginable. But where and how they should start their journey towards healing can become a source of confusion.

At a support group meeting, there was a conversation about our inherent need to assign meaning to a meaningless event. In this case, a mother who lost her teenage son when he was struck by a car. She adamantly said there cannot be any purpose assigned to the loss of a child. Being religious most of her life, she had lost all faith. She was repulsed by the idea that there could be a God who would willingly take the life of a child for some “grand design.”

Another woman was there who lost her son when she was five months pregnant. She had read an article I wrote and said, “I am struggling to find the positive in my son’s death and to grow from this experience. It is still so raw and I’m not sure how to start. I hope that one day I’ll have peace.”

The confusion lies in where we should be looking for purpose and how we define the “positive side” of losing a child.

I think it’s a mistake to look for a “positive side” of a child’s death. The death itself is completely tragic. It’s traumatic, can rip families apart, and causes the worst pain imaginable. If you spend time looking for the positive in that, you’ll be disappointed.

The pain of losing a child lasts forever. How is that positive? What purpose can be found in giving a child life only to have it taken away prematurely? It only serves to underscore the inherent unfairness and randomness of life.

Instead, you can focus your efforts on looking for the positive “silver lining” of what that intense, lasting pain can teach those of us left behind.

You can learn that you are stronger than you ever thought possible. The pain may teach you to focus your energy into cultivating what you’ve discovered matters most to you now. You can stop following society’s preconceived – and often detrimental – ideas of how to achieve success and happiness. Purpose and meaning can be found in how you choose to live your life and best utilize your talents. All while you remain in the permanent shadow of that dark cloud that is your child’s death.

Another way to look at it is to contemplate what a “silver lining” really is. The image that always comes to mind is a dark storm cloud that is seemingly outlined by a bright, shining light. This visual image has been translated to mean that for every bad situation – or dark cloud – there is something positive that can come of it. Such as the calm and light after a storm. But what actually causes the silver lining on a dark cloud?

The “silver lining” is not the cloud itself, but the source of light behind the cloud.

A child’s death is the darkest cloud that is filled with pain and suffering. It initially blocks our view of anything positive or hopeful in our lives. But over time, we may be able to step back into another perspective and catch a glimpse of the source of light we once basked in. The cloud will never go away, but when we are able to remember that there is light – in other words, love – that came first and will always be there, the pain of the cloud does not seem so overwhelming. The cloud of death can give us a deeper appreciation of the light of life and love.

So if you feel stuck or lost, the goal of healing is to not get rid of the dark cloud (your child or loved one died, and nothing can change ever that), but instead to learn to recognize that there will always be light and love that you can find once again as you work through the pain of loss.

Grieving Without God After the Death of a Child

Grieving Without God After the Death of a Child

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I’ve never been religious. I wasn’t raised in a religious household, and even from a young age I saw too much of the dark side that religion can breed. I saw religious intolerance, discrimination, oppression, and even hatred and violence. All of this made me never want to belong to any religion.

But when my young daughter drowned, I was convinced the pain of her death would have been significantly easier had I been religious.

If I had the unwavering faith there was an afterlife, would I feel comforted? If I fully believed in heaven, then I’d be sure my daughter and I would be together again someday. Armed with that knowledge, I assumed the unbearable pain would disappear – or at least lessen significantly.

I recalled all the times I’d seen religious people appear “back to normal” soon after the death of a loved one. They appeared secure in their belief that the deaths were part of God’s “Grand Plan” and their loved ones were resting in heavenly peace.

Many of the condolence messages we received in the wake of Margareta’s death had religious overtones. They were filled with scripture passages and reassurances that she was in a better place and safe with God.

The condolence messages mostly tried to reassure us that God had a plan, and that we should find comfort in this.

To be honest, I began to resent these letters. I was well-aware the people who sent them meant well, but I found it very insensitive to just assume these words would bring us any comfort.

If anything, it made me think they didn’t really know us at all. The letters appeared to be more for the sender’s benefit (to help make sense of the death of a young child) than ours.

In my grief, I began to meet more and more bereaved parents who had lost their religious faith in the wake of their child’s death.

They rejected the notion that their God would have seemingly “chosen” that their child should die, while sparing others. They spoke of the unfairness of it all and had turned their back in anger and even feelings of betrayal. I began to realize that unwavering faith isn’t as strong as I thought if pushed to certain extremes – like losing a child.

Yet even seeing their disillusionment, I was still compelled to search for answers to whether there was some kind of life after this one. Was there some “Grand Plan” that would make sense of her death; to give it some meaning?

The idea that she died for no other reason than we lost sight of her for too many minutes was heart-wrenching. It filled me with unbearable guilt.

I poured over books that described near death experiences and visions of an afterlife. Some books said we live many lifetimes with the purpose of learning different lessons in each. I even got a psychic reading that reinforced this notion of reincarnation.

While I wanted very much to believe in these ideas, I remained unsure. I just couldn’t make that “leap of faith” that it was a certain truth. So I continued down the difficult path of healing my grief not knowing what I should believe.

Looking back, I am actually grateful for my uncertainty and lack of religion. It gave me no other choice than to look inward to find strength and resilience I never believed was there.

This discovery gave me the determination to overcome life-long limiting beliefs. Beliefs that kept me from following my dreams and living a life filled with purpose and meaning. Looking inward taught me the true meaning of kindness, compassion, and empathy. It has improved my relationship with those I love. And has taught me to take better care of myself and my needs.

The catalyst for all of this personal growth was the death of my daughter. It forced me to face my deepest, darkest fears that I had avoided my whole life. I have since learned many profound lessons in the passing years.

So was my daughter’s death all part of some “Grand Plan” after all?

Maybe. Maybe not. Since I can’t know the answer to that question as long as I’m alive, I find more comfort in accepting the fact that I don’t know. I don’t want to ask if there is a God or not. I no longer want to find out the “truth” of whether there is an afterlife.

Letting go of those questions has allowed me to release the anxiety that comes with them.

It allows me to focus on making the best of each and every day here and now. I’m encouraged to nurture my relationships with my family and friends who are still with me. All while acknowledging that I will think of and miss my daughter every day for the rest of my life.

The fact is I would love nothing more than knowing I’ll be with my daughter again someday in a life after this one. But I’m learning to be content knowing that with every thought of her and every lovely memory, she is and always will be with me during this lifetime.

The Club Nobody Wants to Belong To

The Club Nobody Wants to Belong To

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I am a member of a club I don’t want to belong to.

I didn’t voluntarily sign up for it, yet I’m forced to be in it for the rest of my life. The cost of admission to this club was at an impossible price, but it was taken from me anyway. The price was my child’s life. My membership card is my child’s death certificate.

I am the parent of a dead child.

I have found that this club tends to keep to itself because its very existence makes most non-members too uncomfortable. Members of this club are the unwelcome reminders that a family’s worst fear can come true. The death of a child has often been described as “unnatural.” And yet it happens every day, all over the world. Still, these parents and their families often grieve in silence long after the funeral ends.

There is no “getting over it.” People grieve as long as they are a member of this club. Until their own last breath.

It doesn’t matter the age of your child when they died; membership in this club changes you forever.

It changes your understanding of life itself. Your demeanor changes, as do your reactions to everything around you. And these changes can have some nasty side-effects.

The death of a child can cause long-standing marriages or relationships with family or friends to abruptly come to an end for a variety of reasons. It can challenge your faith and rock your belief system to its core. You can develop health issues or go into deep depression. It isolates you from the world.

Membership in this club also brings a torrent of everyday challenges that non-members just don’t understand.

Once simple questions like, “How are you?” or, “How many children do you have?”, become sources of great pain and internal debate. Should you answer honestly and risk exacerbating your pain and feelings of isolation due to the expected horrified look or obvious discomfort of the person asking when they hear your answer? Or do you lie and give the expected answer based on whether you think you’ll ever see the person again, but then feel further isolated or even guilty for seemingly betraying your dead child? This is just one of many examples of dilemmas you never thought you’d have to face.

Even though the pain will last forever, over time, being a member of this club can offer some unexpected benefits.

The death of a child can give you a greater appreciation of how precious this life of ours is. You no longer take certain things for granted. It can teach you a deeper sense of compassion, empathy, and gratitude. In some cases, it can even improve your relationships with yourself and others. It can even lead you towards a life with a greater sense of purpose and meaning.

I have experienced all of these benefits, and am truly grateful for these gifts. But given the choice, I’d give up my membership in a heartbeat.

I’ll always hate being the parent of a dead child.