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work of grief is hard work. Please bear with us, as your love,
support and patience are major tools in our learning to live
with our new circumstances. There are the elements of self-pity
and quite often we'll probably appear unreasonably irritable
and self-absorbed and you won't want to know us; but in the
fullness of time we'll be able to rise stronger and wiser
and in turn become the consoling friend.
I have been one of the more fortunate
ones in finding a Bereaved Parents Group. Here I gain sustenance
and support from parents who know exactly how it is. Sometime
after our daughter died I went to a seminar on grieving and
never felt more isolated and alone. I had very little recognition
of myself in the text-book like descriptions of the grieving
process. This was quite possibly my fault as I was trying
to achieve too much too quickly.
In a handout headed "Normal Grief
Reactions" one of the reactions was "Hallucinations". Well,
I wouldn't like to try telling that to the young woman whose
face glowed with joy as she described seeing her dead child
smiling cheerfully at the foot of her bed or the older man
who heard his son calling softly "Dad", from another room.
The rest of us sit in envy and ache for the opportunity to
see our children again, be it apparition or hallucination.
The only thing we have left is to believe that our children
live on in that 'other place'; that these visions are real
and we accept such "hallucinations" as gifts!
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I
live with the memory of the simple comfort of my daughter's
presence and then paradoxically search for what that memory
felt like. How with just a glance we would speak volumes,
giggle together and our specialty of talking with funny accents
... she would call me 'Shirl'. All the times I thought her
immortal.
My grief is also for all the expectations
that died with my daughter - the expectation of any mother
to see her daughter float down the aisle on her wedding day,
the expectation of seeing her with her first child. The expectation
and the natural curiosity of seeing her in middle age.
My heart swells and breaks again
when I see that magic threesome ... a woman about my age out
with her daughter and that precious grandchild in a stroller
or the toddler clutching on to an outstretched hand. So please
if ever you are the subject of a middle aged woman's tentative
gaze as she hunches over her lattˇ, hug your beautiful child,
smile and walk on and believe in your bounteous good fortune.
Copyright © Helen Hickford |
