Coping With Loss ~ Blogfest For The Golden Sky

I agreed to participate in the blog fest over at Elisa's place to support her in her book launch,  The Golden Sky.   Click the button to learn more about Elisa, Cade and their family, their amazing son Zeke, and her struggle to continue on after he was taken from this Earth way too soon.



 The idea is simple.  Write a post about how you've coped with loss.  Simple right?  Not for me.  You see, I lost my paternal grandmother 7 years ago, then my grandfather 2 years ago.  Both lived in Florida, and while I loved them very much, they weren't part of my everyday.  I think of them often, but the loss I felt was not crippling.  Both were sick, and had lived well into their 80's.  They had had good, long, full lives.

Shortly after, I lost my maternal grandmother, and then suddenly, five months later lost my maternal grandfather.  The loss of my grandfather was difficult, but I felt the loss of my grandmother more, as she was very much a part of who I am.  Her passing was the catalyst for starting a blog, recording my everyday thoughts and experiences, so that one day when my time came, my children would really know who their mother was. 

Aside from that, I have had very few experiences with death.  In high school, the boy who sat in front of me in homeroom came to school drunk.  The administration was unable to be confine him to the school and when confronted, he left.  He proceeded to split his car in half via a telephone pole.  The line for the funeral service wrapped around the church and spilled out into the parking lot.  It was horribly sad, but aside for the empty seat in front of me in home room, my life went on as normal. 

About a month later, the boy who sat behind me was in a dirt bike accident. (It was a bad year for the "Fl..." through "Fo..." crowd.) He was paralyzed from the waist down.  I remember a lot of his friends being understandably upset, but what I remember most is one of the teachers saying, "I don't know why every one's so devastated.  It's not like he died."

But in fact, he did die. The person that he was before the accident no longer existed.  He had to redefine himself and adapt to no longer having the use of his legs.  He dealt with his loss, by selling his dirt bikes and buying an adapted Porsche.  He learned to depend on his friends, and his circle became very tight.  With his family vehemently behind him, failure was not an option.  His dreams of racing professional motor cross gave way to a BA at Northeastern College, and his determination and perseverance allowed for him to make a great new life for himself. Were there moments when he wanted to give up and drown himself in his loss?  Of course.  But he pushed through, knowing that he would be stronger on the other side.  And in some ways, doing so may have been harder than if the accident had killed him.

In many ways, we have all gone through this.  We have all felt great loss of one kind or another.  While I love my children more than life, it would be untruthful for me to say that I didn't mourn the loss, however briefly, of having easy children. Children with ASD do not conform to society or learn the conventional way.  And while that's my reality, I became a better, stronger person when I learned to redefine my ideas and see things through their eyes. Today, I have experienced so much more of an enriched and fulfilled experience as a  mother than I ever thought possible, because of the challenges that came from my absolutely perfect unperfect children.

In fact, I would say that in the last ten years, I have experienced more loss than in the rest of my lifetime.  When I married at 20, it was for forever.  Divorce was simply not an option. Then, the children came.  The pressures of real life changed my husband at the time into someone unrecognizable. Divorce quickly became the only option.  And with that, came the death of my hopes of having a traditional family, my ideas of all that could be, and all that never was.  I mourned my marriage as if it had died.  I went through all the seven stages of grief, each in my own way, and in my own time. It was as if everything I knew and wholeheartedly believed in ceased to exist, yet the ghost (of him) still walked the earth haunting me everyday.

I chose to focus on my children and my health. I thought that if I could be their everything, it could begin to compensate them for the burden of being part of a broken family. I got healthy, both in my body and in my mind.  I reinvented myself, and surrounded myself with only those people who would foster this new, stronger me. I journaled everyday often two and three times a day.  I found those journals a few years later, and I no longer recognized the woman who wrote them.  She was so sad, lonely, and undefined.  Shortly after, I threw them away, along with all the anger, disappointment, and loss held within the pages. 

I do remember that there was a  common phrase written within each entry.

"It will be better tomorrow."

And one day, it was.