Child Loss: Seeing Our Child After Death
People don’t like to talk about this subject. They say it’s too disturbing. But, worse is when it happens to you and you’re not expecting it, and then you believe you’re crazy. Sometimes we honestly believe we can see our child who died walking among the living. You didn’t lose your mind. This is all part of your grief, and it’s time people began talking about it! When my sister died at age thirteen, I was devastated! I was only fifteen, and nobody had prepared me at all about death. Why would they? It’s something you don’t really think much about at that age. And, truthfully, death isn’t a topic that…
Child Loss: Facing Thanksgiving Without My Child
I had to get a few things from Walmart earlier today, and the store was filled with displays for Thanksgiving and Christmas already. In fact, any store you go into has the same advertising going on. I was pushing the cart along the doll aisle looking for a birthday gift for one of my granddaughters, when all of a sudden it hit me. Grief. Full blown grief! I dug deep into my handbag to find a tissue to wipe the tears that were dripping down my face. “Where did this come from?” I asked myself. I wasn’t expecting these emotions to come knocking on the door of my heart — not…
Child Loss and Family Pictures: An Entirely New Meaning
I’m not exacly sure when it happened, but somewhere around age twelve I became a photo nut. There was hardly ever an occasion when I didn’t have a camera in my hands. I’m still that way today. I have taken thousands and thousands of photos, and now that digital photography is available, I’m always snapping photos. It’s irritating to some people, but I love to have a photo to remind me of time spent together with family and friends. This week while having a rare, but necessary, meltdown, I was sobbing in bed one evening and decided to look through some of the thousands of photos stored on my computer. It wasn’t until then…
The Darkest Day of My Life: The Funeral
Probably every person alive remembers the happiest moment of their life and when we recall that moment or occasion or person that brought us such joy that we smile from the inside out and get butterflies in our stomach! Thankfully, I can remember several “happiest moments” in my life, and I hope you can, too! Our darkest moments — those days when we cannot believe we managed to continue to breathe — are the ones we want to forget, yet these moments seems to plague us forever. These heavy, painful times dig right into the core of our heart and won’t let go. The pain of grief gnaws at us continuously for a long…