Grief - Sept 13
It’s been 4 weeks (tomorrow) since Jack passed away, and 9 weeks since he was born.
There is an itch inside me to write down how I am feeling. At the same time there are ugly feelings about writing. Just with every other part of grief - it feels like a “both and neither” situation. Writing would help me process. But writing also makes it real. Makes it stick. Makes it feel permanent in a way I don’t want.
In an effort to step into grief, actively, I am writing. But be warned - this is not sugar coated, I am not yet to the place of being able to say "God did so much good from such a hard thing..."
I recently was gifted and read the first chapter of “A Grief Observed” from CS Lewis. He wrote this after his wife passed away from cancer - a wife he married when she was admitted to the hospital, a wife he knew would likely succumb to the terrible disease soon. And he hits the nail on the head SO. MANY. TIMES. when he describes what he is feeling.
I lost my son. Our son who we knew had a heart that wouldn’t sustain his life without surgery, a surgery we felt confident he would survive despite scary risks and prematurity. In a similar sense, we entered into a similar situation. Certainly with less active choice than Lewis - he chose to marry a woman riddled with cancer - we were asked many times if we planned on “continuing with this pregnancy…” Whatever the difference - Lewis says how I feel in such plain terms. In a way that makes you feel comforted by not being alone in the yucky, sticky feelings of grief. It spoke to me enough that I read the entire first chapter to Ike (although on the second to last page he asked, with his eyes closed laying in bed, how many more pages?)
I’ve read it twice now - here’s my regurgitated impression.
Grief makes you feel unsatisfied, uncomfortable, abnormal. CONSTANTLY. Nothing is the same, yet everything is the same - just without Jack. Some days, I am unhappy at home but then I am unhappy away from home too. I go places and see people I know and uncomfortably squirm as I anticipate interactions with those I haven’t seen since it all happened. Lewis says you hate them if they bring it up, and you hate them if they don’t. You feel like a leper - that is embarrassed to exist and embarrassed when the root of your grief has to be brought up. Yet I long to talk about our sweet boy, but it’s painful and complicated to talk about our sweet boy. One option is not better than the other. Neither feels right. None of this feels right. Because it wasn’t meant to be like this.
Then you think - God isn’t even real. OR - if he is real, how can he be this awful? Then you anguish in the facts. This really happened. It really happened to me. It happened to Ike. I watched as the man I love, who was ecstatic to become a dad, lost his child. It’s actually real. We watched other children improve and transfer out of the PICU. But not our child. Why? Where were you God? I know you are real, so how did this happen? Why our kid?
And Lewis says - what’s worse than grief? Thinking about the life you are living in grief. For me - I have realized lately “I, we, our family, will live a life of grief.” We will always feel like one person is missing, like our family will never be complete on this Earth. Our future children will never know the brother they had. We will never know what he would have been like as a toddler, threenager, tween or teen, big brother or student. We will always be missing one of our kids, our firstborn. And thinking about a “life of grief” is agonizing, long suffering in a way we have never experienced before. What is worse than a life of grief? Thinking about the life of grief I will have to live.
And often, I want to run. Just get the h3ll out of here. But there is nowhere else to go. I run spiritually, God is still there. I run from home, I still feel the loss of Jack. My physical body even reminds me of the loss of Jack. The flab on my stomach reminds me there used to be a human in there, one that I no longer get to see, hold, enjoy his presence. (my body post infant loss is a whole other conversation I will verbalize another time) And the fatigue. Not only is it agonizing to think of this life of grief, it is exhausting. It feels like you need 2x the sleep yet you still yawn after sleeping 12 hours.
There is an itch inside me to write down how I am feeling. At the same time there are ugly feelings about writing. Just with every other part of grief - it feels like a “both and neither” situation. Writing would help me process. But writing also makes it real. Makes it stick. Makes it feel permanent in a way I don’t want.
In an effort to step into grief, actively, I am writing. But be warned - this is not sugar coated, I am not yet to the place of being able to say "God did so much good from such a hard thing..."
I recently was gifted and read the first chapter of “A Grief Observed” from CS Lewis. He wrote this after his wife passed away from cancer - a wife he married when she was admitted to the hospital, a wife he knew would likely succumb to the terrible disease soon. And he hits the nail on the head SO. MANY. TIMES. when he describes what he is feeling.
I lost my son. Our son who we knew had a heart that wouldn’t sustain his life without surgery, a surgery we felt confident he would survive despite scary risks and prematurity. In a similar sense, we entered into a similar situation. Certainly with less active choice than Lewis - he chose to marry a woman riddled with cancer - we were asked many times if we planned on “continuing with this pregnancy…” Whatever the difference - Lewis says how I feel in such plain terms. In a way that makes you feel comforted by not being alone in the yucky, sticky feelings of grief. It spoke to me enough that I read the entire first chapter to Ike (although on the second to last page he asked, with his eyes closed laying in bed, how many more pages?)
I’ve read it twice now - here’s my regurgitated impression.
Grief makes you feel unsatisfied, uncomfortable, abnormal. CONSTANTLY. Nothing is the same, yet everything is the same - just without Jack. Some days, I am unhappy at home but then I am unhappy away from home too. I go places and see people I know and uncomfortably squirm as I anticipate interactions with those I haven’t seen since it all happened. Lewis says you hate them if they bring it up, and you hate them if they don’t. You feel like a leper - that is embarrassed to exist and embarrassed when the root of your grief has to be brought up. Yet I long to talk about our sweet boy, but it’s painful and complicated to talk about our sweet boy. One option is not better than the other. Neither feels right. None of this feels right. Because it wasn’t meant to be like this.
Then you think - God isn’t even real. OR - if he is real, how can he be this awful? Then you anguish in the facts. This really happened. It really happened to me. It happened to Ike. I watched as the man I love, who was ecstatic to become a dad, lost his child. It’s actually real. We watched other children improve and transfer out of the PICU. But not our child. Why? Where were you God? I know you are real, so how did this happen? Why our kid?
And Lewis says - what’s worse than grief? Thinking about the life you are living in grief. For me - I have realized lately “I, we, our family, will live a life of grief.” We will always feel like one person is missing, like our family will never be complete on this Earth. Our future children will never know the brother they had. We will never know what he would have been like as a toddler, threenager, tween or teen, big brother or student. We will always be missing one of our kids, our firstborn. And thinking about a “life of grief” is agonizing, long suffering in a way we have never experienced before. What is worse than a life of grief? Thinking about the life of grief I will have to live.
And often, I want to run. Just get the h3ll out of here. But there is nowhere else to go. I run spiritually, God is still there. I run from home, I still feel the loss of Jack. My physical body even reminds me of the loss of Jack. The flab on my stomach reminds me there used to be a human in there, one that I no longer get to see, hold, enjoy his presence. (my body post infant loss is a whole other conversation I will verbalize another time) And the fatigue. Not only is it agonizing to think of this life of grief, it is exhausting. It feels like you need 2x the sleep yet you still yawn after sleeping 12 hours.
Being outside in the last bits of summer, after a full 35 days spent inside a hospital ICU under intense stress and fluorescent lights. Being with friends that give us the freedom to talk about Jack when we need to and avoid it when we just can’t talk anymore. Also friends that aren’t afraid to step into the yucky with us, to not push us away but stick it out when we really aren’t that fun to be around. And travelling - to the beach, to Washington to be with missionary friends. That has been healing too.
No more living in constant anxiety of a phone call from the ICU. We got a handful of scary late night phone calls - once when Jack was put back on ECMO (the worst), once for a wash out late at night due to increased bleeding, another for a dislodged and replaced ET tube, an arterial ECMO cannula change out, and maybe another that I can’t recall right now. The ring on my phone made my heart rate go through the roof for even a week after he passed away. The night we lost Jack was the first night we slept. I turned off my phone completely and finally slept, deeply! Without fear of a scary phone call. Yet how we longed for a call - that would have meant he was still here with us, still fighting. And we would have stuck it out fighting right alongside him.
No more living in constant anxiety of a phone call from the ICU. We got a handful of scary late night phone calls - once when Jack was put back on ECMO (the worst), once for a wash out late at night due to increased bleeding, another for a dislodged and replaced ET tube, an arterial ECMO cannula change out, and maybe another that I can’t recall right now. The ring on my phone made my heart rate go through the roof for even a week after he passed away. The night we lost Jack was the first night we slept. I turned off my phone completely and finally slept, deeply! Without fear of a scary phone call. Yet how we longed for a call - that would have meant he was still here with us, still fighting. And we would have stuck it out fighting right alongside him.
There is no right way to grieve. There is no right way to do literally ANY OF THIS. There is just freedom and grace and rest. And I will keep processing what I can manage to regurgitate here because it might help someone else in the future.
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