Bitter Sixteen

Bitter Sixteen

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In a little over a month, it will be the “would have been” 16th birthday of my daughter, Margareta. In other words, it would have been her “Sweet Sixteen”, a milestone birthday to mark the beginning of her transition into womanhood. Except that it is anything but “sweet”.

It is a bitter reminder that I’ll never get to experience seeing my daughter as a woman. Or as a mother herself.

It’s not like we would have thrown a large, extravagant party. We wouldn’t have bought her a new car. She wouldn’t have dressed up in a formal quinceañera-style dress. None of that. But as the only girl in a family of boys, her sweet sixteen birthday would have meant something special.

Instead, it will end up being just another “would have been” birthday she’s not here to celebrate. A day on which we’ll have our annual ritual we’ve created to remember with love the day she came into our life.

The lead up to her birthday each year surfaces much of the sorrow, regret, and pain I place in little compartments inside me throughout the year.

Compartments packed away to process another day as I go about my current day-to-day life. And as the years roll on, the compartments do not get nearly as full and overwhelming as they once did. Margareta was 4-years-old when she died, and I’ve had 12 years since her death to process that reality, learn how to better handle the pain, adjust to a life without her, and learn some positive things about myself and life itself along the way.

But in the month or so before her birthday – which happens to be the same month in which she died – all of those compartments seem to bubble over. Every year like clockwork.

The long simmering feelings that stewed in their own juices for months on end begin to fill me once again with anguish, bitterness, and even anger.

And so at the same time each year, I have the excruciating task of wading through all these pent up, painful emotions in an attempt to finally allow myself to experience and then let them go. Sometimes it feels like my penance for not keeping her safe and alive.

Most of the time when I write about my grief, I try to end it by focusing on how far I’ve come in my journey of healing, all the things I’ve learned, and how much I’ve grown as a person. It serves to reassure myself and anyone reading that with some work and time, it does get easier from those early days of intense grief. It provides hope for those suffering under the weight of their pain.

But each year when I’m caught up in the muck of my overflowing pain and regret, I give myself permission to just feel what I feel. And usually those feelings are angry and resentful. And that’s ok.

It has to be ok, because that’s reality. It’s not some self-pity party. The reality of being a bereaved parent is that these painful feelings will NEVER go away. Our child IS dead. Year after year; decade after decade. It may not be what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. The feelings may morph and soften, but they’ll always be there.

There is no happy ending to my story. At least not the one I want. BUT– that doesn’t keep me from seeking and experiencing happiness, love, and appreciation during the remainder of my story.

I’ll be acknowledging and processing my feelings throughout this next month the best I can. And once that’s done, I can resume the new life I’ve built. One that Margareta would have supported and enjoyed seeing me live. One that may not include her physical presence, but her presence in my thoughts and heart every single day.

The Continuing Cycle of Grief

The Continuing Cycle of Grief

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It’s been eleven years since my 4-year-old daughter died. Eleven years of traveling through this complicated journey of grief. To be sure, I have come a long way since those first agonizing days, weeks, months, and years. My life looks and feels very different now. I have come to terms with the devastation, pain, and longing. My personal growth is evident. I am reinvested in life and try to embrace all the goodness it has to offer.

And yet, I will never be free from grief’s treacherous clutches.

I learned this truth many years ago. After years of fighting against the unbearable pain of losing my daughter, I finally surrendered to it. Now don’t get me wrong, surrendering to grief doesn’t mean I was somehow okay with her death. The loss of my daughter is too traumatic; too unbearable to “move on” from and “get over.”

Surrendering to grief meant I accepted the fact that my grief – and all the uncomfortable emotions that come with it – will never fully go away. So there is no point in spending all of my energy and focus on trying to repress those feelings or rage against them. It will always be a losing battle. And, in fact, it just ends up making those feelings more intense.

Once I surrendered to that reality, I was finally able to begin the challenging work to transform my grief—and my life.

Surrendering to grief meant choosing to stop focusing on her death and all the pain it caused. Fixating on the details of her death and the devastating aftermath had kept me stuck in a state of anguish, anger, and hopelessness.

Instead, I chose to focus on her brief life, the love and joy she gave me, and the intense love I will always feel for her. With a lot of diligent, hard work that included support groups, individual therapy, writing, and expressing my feelings, I gained emotional strength and motivation. I was finally able to give myself permission to allow happiness, hopefulness, and even gratitude back into my life. And each year since, grief has loosened its grip on my day-to-day life.

But every year, there is a predictable trigger when grief envelops me once again. Each September, I am faced with my daughter’s birthday and the anniversary of her death.

At the beginning of the month we celebrate her “would have been” birthday without her. We try to make the event joyful. We eat cake and release live ladybugs (which she loved) in her honor. But the fact is she’ll never again blow out birthday candles or open presents. Her birthday is a difficult reminder that we’ve lost another year of watching her grow. We’ve lost the hopes and dreams we had for her. And the pleasure of watching her chase her own hopes and dreams.

The end of the month marks the anniversary of the day she died. That day of horror which is forever seared in my memory. Over the course of the month, I can physically feel the grief tightening around my body. As it grips my stomach, I often feel nauseous. Then it travels up to my chest and neck; squeezing as it goes which makes it hard to breathe at times. It leaks out of my eyes. It clouds my mind and leaves me with headaches and foul moods. I often lose my patience and feel frustrated or even angry at the most ordinary things. It makes my muscles ache and leaves me feeling exhausted all of the time.

And even though I expect it every year like clockwork, there is simply nothing I can do to prepare for it or make it any easier.

Every September, I am immersed in those old feelings of anguish, anger, and hopelessness. For no matter how far I’ve come in my journey of healing my grief, the destination is never going to be the one I want. Because the destination will never include a future with my daughter in it. At least not in the way I long for.

Yes, my daughter is still present in my life and I think of her lovingly every day. But she is forever frozen in time; just a handful of memories I cherish. Memories whose color and detail will fade over time as my mind ages. And that reality crushes my soul during times like this.

I know this wave of grief will pass. I can already sense it starting to loosen its grip once again.

And I will go on living my life, enjoying it, and making the most of it. That is, until next September rolls around again. That is simply the continuing cycle of grief years after such a devastating loss. It is a reality I have no choice but to live with. 

 

Anticipation of a Difficult Day is Always Worse than the Day Itself

Anticipation of a Difficult Day is Always Worse than the Day Itself

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Starting this week, there is a rapid succession of difficult days ahead. That is…I anticipate they’ll be difficult.

This week my youngest son will start Kindergarten. It’s something his older sister dreamed of doing, but didn’t live long enough to do. Next week we will celebrate another of her birthdays without her. She would have been 10. Four weeks after that marks the anniversary of her death at the tender age of four. In the days that follow, I’ll be expected to celebrate my birthday, which fell on the day before her memorial service the year she died.

All of these days carry with them the anticipation of being a grief trigger.  Anticipation can work one of two ways. It can imagine the best-case scenario, or it can imagine the worst.

So when we anticipate a difficult grief trigger, it brings up all the worst-case scenarios our imaginative minds can conjure up.

The first year after losing someone is the hardest. It was for me. It’s hard because your mind has no point of reference to compare to. The first holidays, birthdays, and anniversary of their death (angel-versary, devastation day…whatever you prefer to call it). They’re all anticipated as so painful, you can’t imagine how you’ll survive them.

So let’s get this straight: your anticipation of a grief trigger causes your mind to imagine a worst-case scenario. And since it doesn’t have a reference point to compare to, it compares it to the actual event that is causing the trigger. Your mind tells you the trigger will likely bring you right back to the pain you experienced on the day you lost your loved one. So you find yourself in an anticipatory panic even though you’ve already survived the worst pain imaginable.

In reality, our minds are our own worst enemies. So what do we do about it?

That first year, I felt like cancelling all holidays in an attempt to avoid the pain I knew they’d bring. We couldn’t because we had other young children who expected and deserved the celebrations. So we attempted to change tradition just enough to make them feel different.

For example, for that first Thanksgiving we accepted my brother’s dinner invitation, but requested a few simple things. First, we asked to keep the invite list as small as possible (his family and ours). Second, I requested to sit at the end of the table so that if I felt like I was about to burst into tears, I could easily excuse myself and quickly slip out of the room to be alone. Third, we requested to skip the “what are we thankful for” question tradition. Just thinking of that question that first year made my blood boil with anger.

For the first Christmas after her death, we opted for an artificial tree. It still looked like a normal Christmas for our young kids, but in my mind it was different. While we didn’t buy presents for Margareta to place under the tree, we did buy a wind chime to place in her stocking and then hung it at the cemetery later in the day. We kept to ourselves that year; just a small normal dinner at home. The day was filled with difficult emotions and we thought it best to keep to ourselves and focus all our attention and energy on our kids.

We had more options on Margareta’s birthday and the first anniversary of her death. I scheduled vacation days from work on both those days because I couldn’t imagine being able to function in any meaningful way. For months in advance, I agonized over what to actually do on those days.

I didn’t know what to do to make the horrible pain I imagined any easier. Every time I thought of it, I felt overwhelmed.

How do you “celebrate” a birthday of someone who isn’t there to celebrate it?  You can’t ignore it. After all, you want to acknowledge the birthday of one of the most important people in your life. Do you buy presents and then donate them? Do you make a cake?

And then one sleepless night a few weeks before her birthday, it came to me. Margareta loved ladybugs. I would buy live ladybugs and we would release them at her grave on her birthday. So we did. Seeing the chaos of hundreds of ladybugs escaping the confines of the container they had been held in and exploring their new home injected some needed lightness and smiles into a heavy day that was full of sadness. Releasing ladybugs has become a yearly tradition on Margareta’s birthday. One that will continue for the rest of my life…and perhaps her brothers’ lives too.

As for the anniversary of her death – a vivid reminder of the worst day of my life – I planned to do nothing. And nothing was what pretty much what I did that day. It was an uneventful day. And, of course, wasn’t nearly as painful as I anticipated.

Since that first year, my anticipation of the pain that will be triggered on these difficult days has softened.

Each year I have a larger cache of reference points my mind can compare them to. And each year, the level of pain I anticipate lessens. That is not to say I don’t still feel pain and sadness on these days. But I know that pain pales in comparison to what I felt at her death and in that first year after. And I know that I have survived the worst pain I ever could have imagined. So pretty much anything else is manageable in comparison, right?

I will continue to make taking care of myself a priority on these trigger days that lay ahead of me.

With years of reference points to draw from, I’m better able to steer my mind away from imagining the worst-case scenario, and instead try to visualize the best-case scenario.

For example, I know I’ll feel sorrow on the first day of Kindergarten because my beautiful daughter never got to experience its excitement and joy. But in the meantime, I’m imagining those same feelings for my son, and anticipate being able to share in his happiness.

As for the upcoming anniversary of her death, I still plan to take that day off. These last few years we have consciously decided to do something that we think Margareta would have enjoyed. We do this in an attempt to shift the focus from the pain of her death to the joy she brought us while she was here. I also anticipate knowing that whatever feelings come my way that day, I’ll deal with them the best I can.

Regardless of how new your loss is…just keep reminding yourself that anticipation of a difficult day is always worse than the day itself.