Coping with Grief

Finding Solace Through Compassion

article by Cindy G. Foust

Well, well, well, will you look what we’ve found…it’s the month of May which means we are nearly half way through this year. I know I talk about this at least every month, but it’s because I can’t believe how fast this year is flying by. As I write this column, the kids are on break for Easter and when they go back to school, they will just have a few weeks left before they are out for summer. Crazy? Yes, we are on the cusp of the month of the year where we celebrate mothers, graduates and May flowers.

I’ll start with May flowers and just say this…I don’t know how in the DING DONG (yes, I am shouting) anything will have a chance to bloom in May because it won’t stop raining long enough for a flower to stick its head out of the stem, or wherever it comes from. I mean, rain rain go away and come back, say, somewhere around September. If that’s not a song, it should be. We are water logged and soggy, and just plain sick of it being dark, wet and wet. That’s all I have to say about that. I’ll report in sometime in May on the outside chance my hydrangeas or lilies bloom, but I’m thinking they are just going to stick their tongues out at me and stay inside their cocoon. Wait. Isn’t that a butterfly? I’ve clearly been out of the science classroom for a while. However, when the weather finally does clear and we start to experience some warmer weather and sunshine, May is also a month where we honor graduates.

I have written in columns past about the magical time of graduation…so much life ahead, so full of promise and so many opportunities to fulfill dreams or create new ones. Yes, it’s a happy time, well, it should be at least, but this year readers, it’s a little bit of a struggle for this writer. For you see, this would be the year my late son, Samuel, would be graduating from high school. Oh its true, I have my trigger points that really push me into a funk, and it took me years to realize that this is just my cross to bear, but Samuel’s high school graduation has certainly triggered feelings that have me on the struggle bus. Mother’s Day, too, has historically been a very difficult time for me, every year since his death, and this year, compounded with Samuel’s would be graduation, I have felt myself being a little more melancholy and well, just sad.

Through the years, when different milestones would pass that Samuel should have been here for, I would certainly struggle…birthdays, starting kindergarten, middle school, driving, growing up with his brother, first time duck hunting…just whatever the milestone, I felt robbed and profoundly sad that he wasn’t here. It wasn’t fair, and it’s not fair today, as I write this column, that we aren’t planning his graduation party, his senior trip (Jesus take the wheel, I’ve already been down that road once and will have to go down it yet again), or helping foster his college aspirations.

To some, who have made rather insensitive comments through the years about “getting over it” or “time healing all wounds,” my anguish may seem self-induced as Samuel has been gone 16 years. I mean, that’s plenty of time to “work through my grief,” right? As I sit in the quiet of my office and reflect on this month, I am keenly aware of many hurting hearts in our community…many parents who have recently lost their children, and my heart aches in a way that only a parent who has lost a child can understand. It aches because I know the struggles these parents face…I know the dark days, the sleepless nights, the psychosis that comes with losing a child and how it affects how you parent your other children (forever labeled the psychotic parent, a badge I don’t mind wearing one bit), and the idea or notion that no, there is no amount of time that will ever be long enough to “work through your grief.”

In the years since Samuel’s death, I have counseled with parents who have been forced to travel this same road as Scott and me. It has been in those moments, when prayer is the only thing that seems to bring any amount of comfort, that I have come to realize that my experience, my dark, heartbreaking, harrowing experience has been an opportunity to help other parents. It’s not a “role” I would have designed for myself or for Scott, but it is the one life dealt me and my family. When I think about those who have recently lost children, or any loved one for that matter, grief is grief, no matter how you experience it, I begin to pray for God to allow them one glimpse, one look around them at other parents who are bereaved and realize, that yes, it is the single most difficult thing you will ever experience on this earth, but you will make it through it.

Times like graduation, Mother’s Day, and birthdays are not easy, but I’m sitting here today, at my computer, and I’m okay. There is so much hurt in our community, so much loss, some of it very close to me. One of the most instrumental people in my grief walk, one of the two people who was able to reach me, lost his son a few weeks ago very unexpectedly. Our community gave up one of our children during the recent flooding…senseless, makes no sense, it’s quite simply, unfair. But we don’t get to choose our journey, it oftentimes chooses us and I’m blessed today (kind of all over the place if you would, but bear with me, I’m getting there) to have this platform to write to our grieving readers and hopefully, give them hope that whatever cross they are forced to bear, what loss they must endure, they will get through it. I credit Jesus with my outcome, realizing that not everyone shares the same religious values as me, but quite frankly, I was prayed through my grief cycle. And here I am, 16 years later, overcome with sadness and hurt, but also grateful that even though I had but two short years with my baby, they are the single most sacred years of my life.

I’ll never be the same person…I’m different in the sense that I scoff at the “little” things, because I know how dark the “big” things can be. Those little things that come between friends or loved ones, that seem so important and insurmountable, are most of the time just small insignificant nuances that we should just let go of. Focus on what matters this May (hey, that sounds like a new holiday) on our mothers, our graduates, our family…flowers that are trying to bloom.

Look around you and reach out to someone that is hurting, even if you don’t know them. Send a card to those grieving friends, community members that are on a dark path. And give thanks for the very lives that you are fortunate to be part of, to love. I peeped in on my sleeping children right before I finished this column, and came back out and sat on my staircase and shed me a tear or two or twelve. Okay, I shed a bucket. But it was grateful tears, grateful to be a mother, grateful to be a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I’m grateful to have been Samuel’s mother. And I am grateful to be able to write this column and use my sometimes broken voice to perhaps help just one of my readers dial back in and focus on what really matters…life.