ADDENDUM

After publishing my last post and then re-reading it, I couldn't help but feel just plain AWFUL that it SOUNDED as if I was downplaying the loss of my daughter over my son!!!!  OMG!!!!!  My entire world would crash and burn if EITHER ONE of my kids died before I did!!!!  However, because of my recent encounters with 3 mothers who had lost their sons, that was the emphasis of the blog.  I just needed to set the record straight for my own peace of mind!!  I do hope that you all already knew that, but I just had to make sure of it!

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

How eerie that in this past week, I spoke to two good friends, both of whom had lost their adult sons and I finished reading Elizabeth Edwards' book, called RESILIENCE, in which she, too, lost her 16 year old son.  I don't mind telling you this gives me an uneasy feeling, as my son, whose birthday is just around the corner, and I are unbelievably close and adore the living daylights out of each other!  If anything would happen to him (or to my daughter, too, but this is about sons), I don't know how I would go on living.  However, I somehow would, because I would take lessons from my friends and from the late Ms. Edwards.  They have shown me how everlasting the hurt is, how their days are often so full of pain and agony that they feel they are going insane, even years after the fact, but that life does go on, altho it is certainly not the life they wished they had.
Here is how Elizabeth Edwards describes her life without her son:
"Wishing will not return life to 'before.' 'Before' is forever gone.....This is the life we have now, and the only way to find peace, the only way to be resilient when these landmines explode beneath your foundation, is first to accept that there is a new reality.  The life the army wife knew before her husband went to war, the life of the patient before the word 'terminal' was said aloud, the life of the mother who sat reading by her son's bed and not his grave, these lives no longer exist and the more we cling to the hope that these old lives might come back, the more we set ourselves up for unending discontent."
Let us all take a lesson from these grieving, yet so brave mothers. As one said to me, "I'm so happy that you and your son had such a good visit together, recently.  I really am.  It's great that you know to cherish every moment you have with him."  I truly do.  I hope that you do the same.

GRIEVING AN EX-SPOUSE

There is a loss known to grief professionals as "disenfranchised grief."  This is a grief that is not sanctioned by society; there is a stigma attached and therefore, societal support is either negligable or non-existent.  Examples of grievers who are not supported when a loss occurs would be: prison inmates (or their families), partners of gays or lesbians (altho fortunately, this is changing), women who have abortions and ex-spouses.
   Yesterday, I attended a funeral for the ex of a good friend of mine.  For many years, when my friend, J., (and I) were married, we spent alot of good times together as couples.  Unfortunately, we both divorced, (within two years of each other), but we both remained on good terms with our ex-spouses.  I think I have blogged about this topic before, altho I'm too lazy to look back and read what I wrote (!), but the dilemma came front and center again yesterday at this funeral.
   As I watched J. sitting next to her fiance, wiping away her tears near the coffin of her ex, I couldn't help but feel her pain.  We were both burying (literally) part of our past, over 30 years worth, I, as a friend, she, as an ex-wife. Not only that, but I couldn't help but think what it would be like if, G-d forbid!- I had to attend the funeral of MY ex.  There would be so many other factors entering into my situation:  my ex is remarried and I have been in a long term relationship, just to mention a few variables.  To be honest, I would be absolutely devastated if he died ahead of me, so how would that play out with the significant others we have welcomed into our lives since our divorce?  I can just see it now.  People in attendance would see me grief stricken and would think to themselves (or to others), "If she's so upset, why did they divorce in the first place?"
  This, my friends, is what disenfranchised grief is all about!  Tongues click and people judge.........when they have no right to do so!  Unless you have walked a mile in someone's shoes, then, here's a heads up,  please keep your judgments and opinions to yourselves.  Better yet, don't even go there in the first place!  Don't pretend to know for whom each person is allowed to grieve.  Each and every relationship is personal and no matter how things appear on the outside, none of us has a clue as to what goes on in the inside......as well we shouldn't.  Grievers have enough to deal with.  Let's not burden them more with what we feel is appropriate or not.  We have no clue.

"i sad"

Some creative soul coined this phrase in a social forum today, in reaction to Steve Jobs' death.  Just perfect.  I heard of his death last night, just as I was going to bed and I was so incredibly sad.  Such a brilliant and creative mind is forever gone.  Born to an unwed mother, put up for adoption, a college dropout.......and yet, a genius.
And not just a genius in the obvious ways.  He was a genius in that he "dropped into" his own life (his words).  He left the path that others had laid out for him- college-and "followed his own heart, even when it led him off the well-worn path."  In 2005, he said these words as a college commencement speaker at Stanford:
"You've got to find what you love.  Your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work and the only way to do great work is to love what you do.......Keep looking.......Don't settle."
The last topic he addressed had to do with death.  At the time of this speech, about six years ago, he had been given a clean bill of health after pancreatic surgery, but because he had had such a close call, he had this to say:  "For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, 'if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today'?  And whenever the answer has been 'no' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."   Then he went on to say, "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
   So, from someone who gave so much to the world, and who was clearly not finished when he had to reluctantly leave the stage, let's take his words to heart and vow not to have to leave the stage of our own lives, without living our lives as we truly wanted.  "Stay hungry; stay foolish."

WHAT NOT TO SAY TO A GRIEVER

If truth be told, I could write a year's worth of blogs, concerning this single topic of what NOT to say to a griever.  Because we live in such a death denying society, no one wants to actually learn what to say, because that would bring the topic of death out in the open!  So, when someone we know has suffered from a major loss, the first, and most common, statement said is, "I don't know what to say to him/her."  Well, here's something to remember, that will help you in these situations, from the lips of Elizabeth Edwards, after the death of her 16 year old son:
"So many people, thinking they were taking care of me, asked if I was over Wade's death yet.  I will never be 'over' it, I would tell them, and they would look back at me blankly.  If I had lost a leg, I would tell them, instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was 'over' it.  They would ask how I was doing learning to walk without my leg.  I was learning to walk and to breathe and to live without Wade."

THE RED DRESS by Dorothy Parker

Our childhood dreams don't always come true, unfortunately.
"I always saw, I always said
If I were grown and free,
I'd have a gown of reddest red
As fine as you could see,
To wear out walking, sleek and slow,
Upon a summer day
And there'd be one to see me so
And flip the world away.
And he would be a gallant one,
With stars behind his eyes,
And hair like metal in the sun,
And lips too warm for lies.
I always saw us, gay and good,
High honored in the town.
Now I am grown to womanhood........
I have the silly gown."