Grieving on a Timeline

Many people believe there is a timeline for grief, that after so many months or years you no longer grieve for your loved one.  Maybe that's true for an aunt or uncle, a grandparent, a cousin....someone you loved but was not the center of your whole world like your parent, your child, or your best friend.  I can't speak about what it's like to lose a parent, but my husband and his sisters can.  I can't speak about losing a best friend, but my sister-in-law can.  I know from listening to my husband and his sisters that they could never forget what it felt like the day their father died suddenly or what it was like living every day of their life without their father there to experience life's greatest moment's with.  I also know from listening to my sister-in-law, there is a piece of her life that is missing without her best friend, and she couldn't possibly be the same person she was before her best friend suddenly died.

As humans, we plan the picture perfect life in our heads.  We never imagine that anything as devastating as losing a parent, a best friend, or a child would happen to US.  We know it happens...but to US?? Just like my husband and his sisters always pictured their father being at their weddings, and just like my sister-in-law always pictured her and her best friend having play dates with their kids together, a woman always pictures herself decorating a nursery and giving birth to a healthy screaming baby who they will spend every day or their lives watching grow up into young men and woman with families of their own.  When life doesn't go the way we planned in our heads, we grieve the hardest and longest. There isn't a way to just "get over it."  Life wasn't supposed to be the way it is, and that's one of the hardest realities to accept.

I met a woman on Tuesday who was hospitalized at the hospital I work at.  When I came into work at 2pm the other crisis worker told me she had been trying all day to go see this woman we were consulted on but other things kept coming it.  When I met with the woman and her husband, I knew there was a good reason that crisis worker was not the one who met with her.  I knew it was me that was supposed to be there in that moment for her.  She was an older woman...in her late 40's.  She had been experiencing suicidal thoughts while taking Ambien and was having mood swings, crying spells, and anxiety attacks.  The woman immediately told me she recognizes a lot of her emotional issues stem from her daughter being stillborn in 1996 and never having talked to anyone about how traumatizing her daughter's birth was or how lonely and depressed she felt after her daughter died.  I immediately shared with this woman that I too had a stillborn daughter and three miscarriages, and that I know it is especially important to have a good support system and to be able to be open about the feelings experienced after losing a baby.  The woman shared that before her daughter was stillborn, she lost two babies to miscarriage, and then had her son which she feels incredibly blessed to have.  However, she always feels like a huge piece of her has been missing for the past 18 years.  She explained that to this very day, she feels jealous of pregnant women and has a hard time congratulating the women in her family who are having babies.  She told me that the day her nephew's daughter was born she had intense flashbacks to the birth of her own daughter and her daughter's funeral. The woman said "this is the first time I have admitted any of this to anyone."  What better place for me to have been at that very moment than right there with this woman validating her every emotion?!

My conversation with this woman was proof that you cannot grieve on a timeline.  You cannot force yourself to "get over it" or to "move on."  You cannot put all your emotions into a bottle without expecting that something will come alone and shake them up until they explode.  You cannot expect that you can just forget that there was another child that was supposed to have been apart of your life who you never got to watch grow up and whose personality you never got to see unfold.

My conversation with this woman was also proof that the only way to grieve is to ALLOW yourself to grieve. You must allow yourself feel the way you feel and think the way you think without trying to convince yourself that there are better ways to think and feel.  You must be honest with yourself-that there is a real piece of you that is missing and cannot be replaced, no matter how many children you have after the one who died.  You must accept that it's okay to feel angry with God, to get upset when people say the wrong things, to be fearful of losing another baby/child, to have trouble being the mom or dad you were to your living child before your baby died, and to struggle with feeling happy for other people when everything in their world is going right and everything in your world is going wrong.  You must recognize your emotional triggers, know when to avoid people and situations that trigger emotional breakdowns or flashbacks, and know when to confront them head on to allow yourself a chance to see how far you have come in your grief. You must know that even if one day you are okay around a pregnant woman or a newborn baby-there will always be days when you're just not okay to be around them and that's okay.  You must be open to seeing a therapist, going to a support group, or joining an online support group to allow yourself to be surrounded by others who know what it means to love a child who died and how that affects every part of your life.

There simply is no timeline for grief.  It is a life long process.  There will be great days and there will be down right awful, no good, terrible days.  There will be new reasons to celebrate, and there will be unexpected reasons to fall apart all over again.  There will be moments of silence, and there will be moments of crying hysterically.  There will be happy memories, and there will be traumatizing memories.  There will always be special dates where you will think about your baby even more-their due date, their birth date, their death date, the day they should be starting kindergarten or graduating high school.  All of these moments are inevitable...and they are the price you pay for love.