Now What?...

One of the hardest things to teach your child is the concept of death. Unfortunately, my children have lost some serious role models in their short lifetimes. Death isn’t something you can teach. You have to experience it to feel its effects…and everyone feels it differently. Unfortunately my children have to experience it again this week when they attend a funeral of a true role model in their lives. I’ve taught them to be caring, to be loving, and to focus on the ‘details’ of their lives…but how do you teach them that death is a part of life. Truth is, we can’t teach someone how to ‘let go’. It is virtually impossible to teach them why bad things happen to good people. I like to tell them that bad things happen to BAD people, too, it’s just that not as many people notice or feel it! The saying ‘time heals all wounds’ doesn’t really work either. Often a song will come on the radio, or a dream will appear, or a random thought will come screaming through, and once again the wound is open and the pain is REAL and any steps forward that were accomplished suddenly bring you back to point A. Seventeen years later, and ONE scent can bring you back to that person! You cannot teach them that grief is actually a journey…a marathon, not a sprint. It’s impossible for any one of us to know how to react when your bottom falls out. You try to hold onto every last memory, a facial expression, the sound of a voice, the touch of a hand… You search frantically in those first days to find your connection to that person: a symbol, a photograph, a video…you are mourning the relationship. Maybe grief is different for each person. What I hear are very similar stories of people who can’t move forward, of lives that become separated into life before the death and the new life after. One author stated that when someone dies it feels like the hole in your gum where a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place where all the nerves are a little raw. There have been many people who have died in my life where I’ve had a little time to prepare for it, instead of being a sudden loss. A situation where I knew it WAS going to happen but I just didn’t know WHEN! I had a little time to rake those leaves of emotion into one BIG pile..and THEN let go! I had a chance to say “goodbye...for now”! Yeah, that doesn’t make it any easier either. SO, there’s no RIGHT way to let go; there is no magic word to ease the pain. I wish my children didn’t have to feel this pain EVER; Hell I wish NONE of us did. I can wish for beautiful memories to last a lifetime. I can wish for the sensation of them being close to us and protecting us! I can wish for the tears to be more for the beautiful memories and less for the pain! So I believe that if you miss someone it’s because they taught you about something or changed you indefinitely..that doesn’t die..that is always with us..cherish it, grow with it…and remember why it’s there, everyday! Oh, and also, FUCK cancer…