It was an unforgettable moment, frozen forever in time. If you are a member of this lonely club then no more words are needed. It is that moment that our arms now empty, nothing left to do, all hopes gone tries to seep its new reality into our numb brain. For me, it was getting into the car, waiting in the hospital parking lot, looking at the sunrise in the very early dawning of a June morning in the year of 1990. Today the clouds are just a recollection away, the way the air felt so still, how quiet everything seemed around me, even the birds awakening seemed muted and I said the words that should have been listened to deeply by those around me, "I feel like I just died with her".
Unwanted wisdom, that is what I call it now. No one will ever understand exactly how I perceived this event in life, no one will ever understand your perceptions either. It can't be done, the wisdom has been bought and paid for with our losing a part of ourselves. What that wisdom is? Well, only the recipient truly knows.
I will try to help those who have someone in their lives who just joined this unwanted club. There is no help for the Mother or Father who's life just vanished with the lose of their child. Only they can find their way out of the deep crevice just fallen into. One thing is for certain, the person you knew is gone. The loved one now is deeply changed in ways that they do not even comprehend because the comprehension of losing a child is unreachable to a grieving Mother or Father.
So many words were spoken to me, I inwardly silently screamed at most. People would ask, "What can I do to help?" My answer was always, "Bring her back to me". The person they knew was gone, in the following few days, buried along side of my daughter. What I needed to hear was, "I am so sorry this has happened to you. I can't understand what you are feeling but here let me sit with you a while." That is all I needed, sometimes to talk, other times to just sit with someone else for however long it took.
It was surreal how everyone thought I would just get over it, time being the great healer and all. Get back into a "normal" routine and everything would be alright. Eventually, no one spoke of her either fearing upsetting me in some way or their lives just no longer included her. My life never stopped including her and never would, it would just become a lonely private thing shared with very few. I was not the same person they had known and never would be again.
Eat more they would say, so I did. Eat less they would say because now I had eaten far too much. Simple fact is that no one knew what to do and should have just listened, been there and listened. Let the doctors worry about my physical well being because that was of little to no importance to me at the moment. It would have been nice for others to come help me, make a day of it maybe, clean my house as the dust gathered in corners without my even noticing. Not as sympathy but as a girls day type of thing because for a very long time (its a life time change) the grieving person may not feel even like getting dressed to go out to lunch. For however long it takes the only thing in the grieving persons mind (regardless of how proficient they get at pretending) is the loss within, being caught in some great crevice alone.
I had, in a blink of an eye, stopped being who I was. This is how most grieving persons feel. I no longer was my Daughters Mother. I was no longer me. Everyone treating me as I were the same only drove the knowledge deeper that I had changed yet was all alone in this change, no one else could see it. Any grief is the same, in the blink of an eye I stopped being the Spouse etc but I think it is different with a child. This is not something I care to ever gain the unwanted wisdom of though so only another who has lost a spouse to death could answer this but not I. I also can not say how another is experiencing this unwanted wisdom, only that with the death of a child the subject is so taboo that we (as a society) want to pretend that everything will be ok with time. Society is wrong about this, very wrong.
Finding myself in a world that wanted the person they had always known was very difficult. For many years I refused to celebrate any holiday as the memories were just too intense. I stopped, in time, caring how I looked or how my surroundings looked, a deep depression for which a pill was just something to help everyone else as it dulled the sharp corners of this unwanted wisdom. When others had rejoined their lives, I stopped joining them along their journey, it was far too difficult to stay silent as others expected me to be me and I was no longer that person. They could not see this or even begin to comprehend the extent to which I needed to find the new me and this was not always by doing the things I had done in the past which reminded me who I no longer was, intensely.
What did I need as the shock wore off? I needed others to comprehend that the person they knew was no longer here. I needed others to explore the new world I was now in with me. I needed everyone to stop being so disappointed that I was no longer the person I had once been. I looked the same, my voice sounded familiar and most mannerisms remained constant but inwardly it was completely changed with no one to share it with. I needed others to bury the former person I had been, my Daughters Mother, with her and get to know the new me. They might like me, they might not but one thing for certain is that the unwanted wisdom changed me completely.
It might sound as if I hate the unwanted wisdom? I hate the way this particular wisdom happens but not the wisdom itself. See, I have a deeper understanding of the bonds between each of us than most might. I have a deeper relationship with myself than most. I love more deeply than anyone without this wisdom might fully appreciate and value those that I love with all that I am. I see the world in a very different way than those without the wisdom. The view from this new perspective is more compassionate, fearlessly protective and willing to do whatever it takes to help those that I love be at peace. Now, would others agree? Most probably not but then again, they are not a member of this club and I hope they never are.
Each member of this club gains its own insights based on whatever it is that they need to go forward. They will go forward, with or without you, that choice is yours. Will you like the new person emerging? Will you enjoy the company of this new friend, lover, Mother, Father? Will you grieve, rage etc the lose of her and not know why your inner being is so disturbed? The only way to survive is to change and losing a child changed everything.
About the Author: Lost her 17 year old Daughter in a roll over car accident and for 23 years tried to make some sense of the totality of the event. Her Daughter was a multiple organ donor (at her own request and lovingly carried out these wishes by the Author) giving 2 women the chance to raise their own children through kidney transplantation and another little girl a new heart. Neither therapy or drugs could heal the broken heart she suffered so she found her own truth and healed herself.
