Grief/Not Grief
There are parts of child loss that feel more like self flagellation than actual grief.
Through reading hundreds of shares from other parents of loss, I’ve come to understand that no matter where we are on our journey, and no matter how we lost our child, this theme seems to be almost universal. Which is what gives me the courage and desire to share this piece. Though it feels very raw.
It’s centered around finding the one thing we did that contributed to this outcome. And then take responsibility for it.
That’s what parenting is. Keeping our children safe and alive. Being 100% responsible for another person.
It can be really hard to adjust for other variables when we are oriented this way. This over-responsibility for factors we couldn’t reasonably influence.
It means we can almost always find a standard deviation that fits a hypothesis of life.
For instance…
If we lost a pregnancy, we flagellate ourselves with the foods we ate or didn’t eat, activities we engaged in or failed to engage in. Etc.
If we lost an infant to SIDS, it’s some part of our routine. Why didn’t we do something differently? Walk in minutes sooner? Why didn’t we answer that niggling feeling?
If was an illness that took our child, we blame our DNA, or we blame ourselves for not knowing some key piece of information we are sure that every other parent in the world would have known that potentially could have shifted the outcome.
In all of these the theme is- It’s us, we were somehow defunct.
For me, In Tanner’s case it’s been tracking the timeline of his life and second guessing every choice I ever made.
Why didn’t I know about attachment parenting 23 years ago? Was it the postpartum depression? Why did I move us overseas when he was 7, or let him live with his Dad in 8th grade? And a million decisions in between, beginning at birth.
It’s endless.
He was a beautiful puzzle in life, that continues to challenge me even after death.
Of course, I’m sure not every parent does this. But from what I see it is fairly universal to spend at least part of our grief journey traversing these realms.
After contemplating what this is about for me specifically, I’ve come up with a few ideas.
First, I can only do any of this mental masturbation, when I hold his death as wrong.
It causes me to focus on all of the negative aspects of his life, tainting our memories together. To look at where things were hard or “bad”.
Second, I think this is a deeper chamber of the dark labyrinth of grief that is all about ourselves. Not our loved ones.
A hall of mirrors initiation in facing the darkest part of us.
The part that may be responsible for our child’s death.
This fear about myself feels tantamount to murder.
I’m not being dramatic. I’m saying it plainly. Honestly.
It’s always been a fear. Since my first pregnancy. What if through my actions, my child dies? And I suspect it’s a fairly universal part of parenting. A lack of trust in ourselves.
This is the fear I’ve been playing whack-a-mole with in my mind since he died. My mind doesn’t want me to see it. Yet it’s there.
Am I a murderer? Did I miss something, neglect something? Something that led to this outcome?
In society we have long held absolute disgust for these kinds of parents.
Their sensational stories, splashed across the headlines. We hate those monsters. The worst kind of person is the kind of person that would hurt a child.
What if I am like them?
Only I haven’t said this out loud. Because it’s ridiculous.
It doesn’t make any logical sense.
It doesn’t hold up against any shred of evidence I put to it.
And yet, it’s there.
It was fascinating to me when I found it.
“Oh, this is DARK”, I thought to myself when I discovered it hanging out. Begging me to breath life into it.
Can I meet this part of myself? Is this shadow? Demon? How do I engage here?
I’ve realized how sneaky this is.
This super dark, seductive story.
Deep and convoluted.
One part real fear, one part high sensation mythos. The Death Mother.
What I’ve realized though, is that it’s a “cover” story.
Because when I engage with it. When I hold responsibility for his death, I don’t have to feel the deep well of sadness underneath.
It covers. Covers pain.
I can just punish myself and be angry. Turn all of the pain in on myself. Twist myself in knots of Shame. Instead of feel the way more tragic thing below.
He is gone. This is his story. It is just sad. Endlessly sad.
And forever is such a long time. There was so much I still wanted to teach him, experience with him, share with him. Now it’s just not possible. Not in the physical. And honestly, the non-physical is a poor substitute to feeling my child in my arms.
Being with the hugeness of this is… heartbreaking.
It’s tender. It cracks me open and leaves me vulnerable during a time when it seems the sensible thing to do to a world that took my son, would be to close the shutters and say goodbye.
But all of this closing and mental darkness only exists when I make his death an aberration. When I make myself the arbiter of the universe. The God who holds sway over life and death. When I say it shouldn’t have happened.
Only, I’m not. I am not a God. If I hold it differently, if this is Tanners story, and it was always going to end, it’s harder.
The monkey mind, and self flagellation feels way easier than acceptance.
Accepting Tanner’s death as part of some greater thing is way more challenging. For starters, it oddly feels like giving up on him.
But it also means I have to keep on living, because my story isn’t over.
Living after loss is a feat. It takes tremendous courage to say to life “even though you hurt me with the biggest hurt, I’m still going to love you. I’m not going to turn my back on my own incarnation.”
And avoid the grief.
I’ve spoken a lot about finding the thread of Grief/Not Grief.
This exploration keeps being refined. I continue to find places that hook me into non-productive story. Causing me to suffer.
Places I need to both be able to relate to what is arising, and yet not get invested until I know whether or not it’s true.
The other reason I wrote this is because of shame.
Because when I can hide in the labyrinth, and cover with stories I am bypassing the deeper thing. Even if it appears “pain” still exists. It’s not pain, it’s a contract with suffering.
It’s the Ego. The one that keeps thinking I’m a God.
So this is me, shining a light on a very dark place. So I can continue to commune with the pure grief underneath.
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*If you read this far, I admire your courage in coming with me into some of the harshest terrain of my journey yet. Thank you endlessly for still being here.
