To my compassionate friends,
- a letter I won't send, just clarifying my thoughts. I have been gearing up for about a week to work on the winter newsletter. I gathered articles when I did the fall edition so that I didn't have to wade through all the entries in the database this time, yet I still find it so hard to do.
I think of all of you from last night's meeting, and I wonder if I can choose articles that might resonate with you, that might lighten your burden, or bring it on stronger and let you cry. Articles that won't offend, and will serve the purpose of helping you not to feel alone.
Yet, we are all mostly alone in our grief.
I feel your pain, and I carry it with me in my heart.
Before I can put the newsletter together, I need to process your losses.
I used to think you were lucky if you had time with your child before they died, but I now realize that watching them ill and dying isn't a picnic either.
To our members this month: I was thinking of the month I took the photo of your son home for safekeeping and had him on the mantle next to Lev. I lit a candle for them both. I am so sorry that he died such a needless, accidental death. I am sorry that you had to deal with going to his fiancee's wedding, five years later, to another man.
To our senior member, whose son has been gone twenty years this month, I appreciate your wisdom; I appreciate that you can admit that some of your happiest lifetime moments have been in the last twenty years without him. Yet, I see how deeply he is still missed. Nineteen years here, twenty years gone.
To our two new members whose only children died, I know it must be hard to hear us talk about our surviving children. Aptly said, "You have a large hole in your gut, and the cold wind blows through."
To those who are now raising their grandchildren... I understand. "How lucky they had kids, yet how difficult to grieve and start over as a parent again."
Thinking of you, dealing with the complication of a suicide, wrongful death, accident, illness, or traumatic death. Missing them is unbelievably hard, blaming, questioning, anger, and confusion just add to it.
You speak of the pain you feel for others, when you hear about a shooting in a movie theatre, or at a school -seeing others join this club that no one wants to join.
I feel your pain, and I'm sorry for those of you who don't have family or friends who try to understand.
Yet, can I help just a little with a newsletter? I doubt it, but sometimes, just sometimes, I choose an article that really means something to someone. Let's hope that happens again.
