As a grieving mother, I have a different answer. I joined a group of other grieving parents and noticed a serious problem with parents who couldn't heal - even a little - after three... ten... thirty years. Parents who kept their dead child's bedroom exactly as it was in the last moment they left. Parents who were stuck in a consistent scream of agony for decades. "What kind of a parent, who genuinely loved their child, could ever feel joy again after the death of that child? To heal means that I didn't really love them." That's how they feel. Guilty and convicted. They don't feel like they have permission to heal and move forward. They felt like that would be a betrayal of their kid and would somehow imply that they didn't love their child more than anything in life. Those were the lost souls who resisted healing. Who desperately clung to their grief and reinforced it daily by talking about their dead child constantly. They posted pictures of their dead child on FB first thing every morning to keep that pain fresh and to maintain their suffering at the highest possible level for the longest possible time. And I witnessed the results of their flawed thinking. Their marriages failed. All of them. Because when their partner began to heal, they saw it as a betrayal of their child. They lost the relationships with their other living children because they were too lost in their sadness to show care or love for the ones still breathing. And they lost themselves. They put themselves in a state of hell and insisted that it was right for them to be there. When I realized what I was seeing, I began to be proud of myself when I made it through a 24 hour period without breaking down in tears even once. (That took a solid year.) I packed away all of the pictures of my son for one year so I wasn't constantly reminded of my loss. I made it a point to shower, eat breakfast, then give myself 20 minutes in the morning to browse FB and post funny memes - without mentioning my dead son once. And I allowed myself to chuckle and smile at those memes and videos of kittens. I made myself take a short walk every day and to take a moment to appreciate a busy little ant as it carried it's load across the sidewalk. I poured the booze down the sink, went to the doctor and started taking my vitamins. I made it a point to do something productive every day. It might just be emptying and reloading the dishwasher, but the next day I'd also wipe off the counters, and sometime over the next week I'd also be sweeping the floor. I tried to always build, just a little bit, on my previous accomplishments. Yes, the pain was still there and yes, he was mostly on my mind at that time, but I began to be granted short reprieves where I was immersed in something else for just a few moments and I began to catch my breath. For a very long time I felt like I'd been skinned and I was staggering around, raw and bloody, but at least I was taking a few more short steps than I had the day before. I began with those very small steps and eventually (after two full years) I found my way out of hell and back into the sunshine. Just in time to welcome my new grandson into the world. And I told myself this was all GOOD. This was correct. Yes, my son is a part of me and always will be, but it's okay to continue to live. Other people need me and I'll let them down if I can't regain my balance and strength. Yes, I'd trade my own life for my son's if I could, but I can't and I have to find a way to live with that. To live with that. To live. I gave myself permission to LIVE again. And that's how you find your way out of hell. Know you should and that it's wrong and selfish not to.
WOW!! Your advice was incredibly heartfelt and profoundly true!! I read it twice and am so very sorry to learn of your son's passing on. My Aunt Carle had lost her angel-of-a-son, Nelson, to leukemia in 1975 when he was only 15 years old. Five years later, when she was 50, she wrote the following paragraph in a letter to me the night of my 27-year-old wife's burial in 1980 due to her pedestrian accident: "Someone sent me a card shortly after he died and the words impressed me so they will be with me until I die and I would like to share them with you - "Remembered joy can break the heart. But who… even on the darkest day, would choose to have missed the joy." And this is how I survive remembering the joy he gave us." Your comment here and her letter both contain amazing words of help and hope that could have only been written by someone who has gone through and survived the unfathomable suffering felt from the passing on of someone they loved with their entire being. If anyone reads this and would like me to copy her complete letter so they may be helped by it as well, just let me know and I will do so. With appreciative and caring regards, Steve Russell
@ginny8601 Hi Ginny, If you are responding here, I am so very sorry for your loss. My dearest Aunt Carle, who I mentioned in my previous comment above, actually lost another of her sons 8 years later after Nelson passed on. She was asked by a priest if she would please join a new church-related support group he was starting up for parents who had lost a child. He was hoping she would join to help support other grieving parents as she was further along in her grieving "journey." Her answer, of course, was YES!! When the priest retired after 15 years of heading up the support group, he asked my Aunt if she would please take over in leading this group. Her answer again was, of course, YES!! If you would like me to copy her entire amazing letter that she wrote to me that I mentioned above, I will readily do so. I still give copies of it out more than 42 years after she wrote it at the age of 50 in November of 1980. My doctor and his wife, who is a nurse, told me that her letter was the most helpful thing of everything they read after losing one of their children due to leukemia. May God keep you and your passed on loved one in the palm of His Hand. Steve Russell
@@enjoylifesteve3925 thank you for the reply Steve, it’s not me who lost someone but I’m trying to be there for someone who lost his 20 year old son recently and fell into a deep depression. Ive been looking up these videos to get a better understanding of how people feel in a situation like this and how to help
@ginny8601 Hi again Ginny, You are very kind to want to help. I am going to copy my Aunt Carle's full letter here & will communicate further if you wish to. I may be able to help you help your friend. Dear Steve,
The loss of your beloved Debbie brings sadness to all of us who know and love you. I hope you do not think it presumptuous of me to try to tell you some of what has come of our own grief over the loss of Nel. He was like Debbie - thoughtful, devoted, tender, kind - all the things that make up a good and delightful human and oh how hard the parting with such a one was.
He asked me once, "Why me, Mum? I'm too young to die. I haven't done anything wrong and I have so many things I want to do." I told him I didn't know why and truthfully, I had no answer to give except to tell him his love and his being a part of our lives had enriched us so and his life, even though cut short, was a meaningful one.
I think you must apply the same reasoning to Debbie's being taken from you. Her time was short but you are enriched forever by the love she gave you. You may search forever looking for a why but would end up in frustration and bitterness. Instead, try to realize that life at best is imperfect and personal sorrow comes into every life. Tragedy such as yours is a part of human existence. As we live our daily lives we do not dwell on this but we must be aware of its presence and profound sorrow, for those of us who have dared to love much, can serve to bring us into closer fellowship with our fellow man.
Someone sent me a card shortly after he died and the words impressed me so they will be with me until I die and I would like to share them with you - "Remembered joy can break the heart. But who… even on the darkest day, would choose to have missed the joy." And this is how I survive remembering the joy he gave us.
Someone said it more apt than I, "Nothing is more certain than death; nothing is more uncertain than the time of death." Nel lived only fifteen years, but his death opened my eyes to life, to all that is good in man. I loved him very much as I do all my children, but I related to him more closely because some how from very early on he was special, the one that touches a heart more deeply than others.
To be able to live on and continue with life as he would have lived meant that I had to change. All of my prejudice, my judgements of others, my inactions when I should have acted to others, all of this vanished. I now find comfort in doing for others in my nursing. Somehow I am doing it for him for all that he meant to me. So hopefully my life will be as meaningful as his was.
I pray you will not run from the memories. To try to root them out would destroy all the most cherished values that united you to each other and to the best that is within you. Confront them and work it out day by day. It takes time and is nothing to rush. Grief will be a part of your life but it will lessen. The pain will always be there but how you handle your suffering will determine whether you turn inward and isolate yourself from relationships or use your sorrow to build a strength that will make you a whole human being capable of giving and receiving love.
I seem to be searching here for the right thing to say but I think mainly my concern is that you remember her with love and joy the rest of your days as we remember Nel. How we love to speak of him - yes, even though it hurts sometimes - because in my mind to do otherwise would refute all that we told him and all that we taught him of all the values we hold dear.
In other words, Steve, we live with Faith, Hope & Love in a most imperfect world hoping that by our small contribution to this planet our lives too will have had some value and we can feel safe with the love of God and man when it comes time for us to move on. With much love, Aunt Carle
Mann. Endless pain. No amount of happiness, smiles, success or love can erase that pain.. not even for a second.. I pray for all those going through this too. Love yall
As a greiving farther: Yes to this. I have been fortunate to have all these things, and it has been helpful. I also designed a memorial tattoo and found a good artist who could help me wear what's inmy heart on my sleeve. Facing that pain every day in the mirror has helped me.
From "Word Songs of Love and Life" “Yours Is My Sorrow” Albert Moore Yours is my sorrow, thus must we part. Brought to our knees from same, stilled heart. What I can give, I cannot receive. What you so mourn, I cannot relieve. We shared the joy, the hope and fear. Now more suffering it is to be near. So dark is my soul, I cannot reveal In anguished grief the love I feel. In time, as it comes, I desperately pray I will find the words we need to say. Now we must wait for pain’s release. Only then, together, finding solace and peace. Somewhere, beneath grief too heavy to bear, Know that my love for you is still there.
I feel So guilty for grieving, people are sick of it. But I lost a daughter who is alive. They said I had to take God out of the conversation and I refused. 26 months and I haven’t seen or heard from her. She was 14 when they took her. Yet I have our boys who I have raised into men that work, play music, go to college. Even with them refusing to leave they took my baby girl. Jordon it was political. I would not comply to any mandates and they told her I was crazy and was going to kill them by not vaccinating them. Then they vaccinated her without my consent. I have no leg to stand on. Yet I’m not a criminal her father is. They handed her over anyway. I have no idea if she is safe they will not do welfare checks. It’s hell. I can’t live her much longer
I agree. It's absolutely ridiculous. I lost my beloved teenage daughter in January 2023. There's no "adjustment", "getting over it", nothing. We just try to learn to live with our loss.
As a grieving mother, I have a different answer.
I joined a group of other grieving parents and noticed a serious problem with parents who couldn't heal - even a little - after three... ten... thirty years. Parents who kept their dead child's bedroom exactly as it was in the last moment they left. Parents who were stuck in a consistent scream of agony for decades.
"What kind of a parent, who genuinely loved their child, could ever feel joy again after the death of that child? To heal means that I didn't really love them."
That's how they feel. Guilty and convicted. They don't feel like they have permission to heal and move forward. They felt like that would be a betrayal of their kid and would somehow imply that they didn't love their child more than anything in life.
Those were the lost souls who resisted healing. Who desperately clung to their grief and reinforced it daily by talking about their dead child constantly. They posted pictures of their dead child on FB first thing every morning to keep that pain fresh and to maintain their suffering at the highest possible level for the longest possible time.
And I witnessed the results of their flawed thinking. Their marriages failed. All of them. Because when their partner began to heal, they saw it as a betrayal of their child.
They lost the relationships with their other living children because they were too lost in their sadness to show care or love for the ones still breathing.
And they lost themselves. They put themselves in a state of hell and insisted that it was right for them to be there.
When I realized what I was seeing, I began to be proud of myself when I made it through a 24 hour period without breaking down in tears even once. (That took a solid year.) I packed away all of the pictures of my son for one year so I wasn't constantly reminded of my loss. I made it a point to shower, eat breakfast, then give myself 20 minutes in the morning to browse FB and post funny memes - without mentioning my dead son once. And I allowed myself to chuckle and smile at those memes and videos of kittens. I made myself take a short walk every day and to take a moment to appreciate a busy little ant as it carried it's load across the sidewalk. I poured the booze down the sink, went to the doctor and started taking my vitamins. I made it a point to do something productive every day. It might just be emptying and reloading the dishwasher, but the next day I'd also wipe off the counters, and sometime over the next week I'd also be sweeping the floor. I tried to always build, just a little bit, on my previous accomplishments.
Yes, the pain was still there and yes, he was mostly on my mind at that time, but I began to be granted short reprieves where I was immersed in something else for just a few moments and I began to catch my breath. For a very long time I felt like I'd been skinned and I was staggering around, raw and bloody, but at least I was taking a few more short steps than I had the day before.
I began with those very small steps and eventually (after two full years) I found my way out of hell and back into the sunshine. Just in time to welcome my new grandson into the world.
And I told myself this was all GOOD. This was correct. Yes, my son is a part of me and always will be, but it's okay to continue to live. Other people need me and I'll let them down if I can't regain my balance and strength. Yes, I'd trade my own life for my son's if I could, but I can't and I have to find a way to live with that.
To live with that. To live.
I gave myself permission to LIVE again.
And that's how you find your way out of hell. Know you should and that it's wrong and selfish not to.
WOW!! Your advice was incredibly heartfelt and profoundly true!! I read it twice and am so very sorry to learn of your son's passing on.
My Aunt Carle had lost her angel-of-a-son, Nelson, to leukemia in 1975 when he was only 15 years old. Five years later, when she was 50, she wrote the following paragraph in a letter to me the night of my 27-year-old wife's burial in 1980 due to her pedestrian accident:
"Someone sent me a card shortly after he died and the words impressed me so they will be with me until I die and I would like to share them with you - "Remembered joy can break the heart. But who… even on the darkest day, would choose to have missed the joy." And this is how I survive remembering the joy he gave us."
Your comment here and her letter both contain amazing words of help and hope that could have only been written by someone who has gone through and survived the unfathomable suffering felt from the passing on of someone they loved with their entire being. If anyone reads this and would like me to copy her complete letter so they may be helped by it as well, just let me know and I will do so.
With appreciative and caring regards,
Steve Russell
Thank you so much for this
@ginny8601 Hi Ginny, If you are responding here, I am so very sorry for your loss. My dearest Aunt Carle, who I mentioned in my previous comment above, actually lost another of her sons 8 years later after Nelson passed on. She was asked by a priest if she would please join a new church-related support group he was starting up for parents who had lost a child. He was hoping she would join to help support other grieving parents as she was further along in her grieving "journey." Her answer, of course, was YES!! When the priest retired after 15 years of heading up the support group, he asked my Aunt if she would please take over in leading this group. Her answer again was, of course, YES!!
If you would like me to copy her entire amazing letter that she wrote to me that I mentioned above, I will readily do so. I still give copies of it out more than 42 years after she wrote it at the age of 50 in November of 1980. My doctor and his wife, who is a nurse, told me that her letter was the most helpful thing of everything they read after losing one of their children due to leukemia.
May God keep you and your passed on loved one in the palm of His Hand.
Steve Russell
@@enjoylifesteve3925 thank you for the reply Steve, it’s not me who lost someone but I’m trying to be there for someone who lost his 20 year old son recently and fell into a deep depression. Ive been looking up these videos to get a better understanding of how people feel in a situation like this and how to help
@ginny8601 Hi again Ginny, You are very kind to want to help. I am going to copy my Aunt Carle's full letter here & will communicate further if you wish to. I may be able to help you help your friend.
Dear Steve,
The loss of your beloved Debbie brings sadness to all of us who know and love you. I hope you do not think it presumptuous of me to try to tell you some of what has come of our own grief over the loss of Nel. He was like Debbie - thoughtful, devoted, tender, kind - all the things that make up a good and delightful human and oh how hard the parting with such a one was.
He asked me once, "Why me, Mum? I'm too young to die. I haven't done anything wrong and I have so many things I want to do." I told him I didn't know why and truthfully, I had no answer to give except to tell him his love and his being a part of our lives had enriched us so and his life, even though cut short, was a meaningful one.
I think you must apply the same reasoning to Debbie's being taken from you. Her time was short but you are enriched forever by the love she gave you. You may search forever looking for a why but would end up in frustration and bitterness. Instead, try to realize that life at best is imperfect and personal sorrow comes into every life. Tragedy such as yours is a part of human existence. As we live our daily lives we do not dwell on this but we must be aware of its presence and profound sorrow, for those of us who have dared to love much, can serve to bring us into closer fellowship with our fellow man.
Someone sent me a card shortly after he died and the words impressed me so they will be with me until I die and I would like to share them with you - "Remembered joy can break the heart. But who… even on the darkest day, would choose to have missed the joy." And this is how I survive remembering the joy he gave us.
Someone said it more apt than I, "Nothing is more certain than death; nothing is more uncertain than the time of death." Nel lived only fifteen years, but his death opened my eyes to life, to all that is good in man. I loved him very much as I do all my children, but I related to him more closely because some how from very early on he was special, the one that touches a heart more deeply than others.
To be able to live on and continue with life as he would have lived meant that I had to change. All of my prejudice, my judgements of others, my inactions when I should have acted to others, all of this vanished. I now find comfort in doing for others in my nursing. Somehow I am doing it for him for all that he meant to me. So hopefully my life will be as meaningful as his was.
I pray you will not run from the memories. To try to root them out would destroy all the most cherished values that united you to each other and to the best that is within you. Confront them and work it out day by day. It takes time and is nothing to rush. Grief will be a part of your life but it will lessen. The pain will always be there but how you handle your suffering will determine whether you turn inward and isolate yourself from relationships or use your sorrow to build a strength that will make you a whole human being capable of giving and receiving love.
I seem to be searching here for the right thing to say but I think mainly my concern is that you remember her with love and joy the rest of your days as we remember Nel. How we love to speak of him - yes, even though it hurts sometimes - because in my mind to do otherwise would refute all that we told him and all that we taught him of all the values we hold dear.
In other words, Steve, we live with Faith, Hope & Love in a most imperfect world hoping that by our small contribution to this planet our lives too will have had some value and we can feel safe with the love of God and man when it comes time for us to move on.
With much love,
Aunt Carle
Mann. Endless pain. No amount of happiness, smiles, success or love can erase that pain.. not even for a second.. I pray for all those going through this too. Love yall
I can’t even function at all. This is not how the universe is supposed to work. I can’t stop crying
As a greiving farther:
Yes to this. I have been fortunate to have all these things, and it has been helpful.
I also designed a memorial tattoo and found a good artist who could help me wear what's inmy heart on my sleeve. Facing that pain every day in the mirror has helped me.
Hey! I’ve noticed this piano music being used in many of the UA-cam Shorts. Just wondering what’s the name of it? Thanks 😊
Grief doesn’t end. We don’t get our children aren’t going to show up every holiday. You can’t understand that unless you do
We lost our child in the second trimester a month ago. Isn't getting easier.
Same here...Just happened today. I am lost. We had to give birth to his dead body. Broke me
From "Word Songs of Love and Life"
“Yours Is My Sorrow” Albert Moore
Yours is my sorrow, thus must we part.
Brought to our knees from same, stilled heart.
What I can give, I cannot receive.
What you so mourn, I cannot relieve.
We shared the joy, the hope and fear.
Now more suffering it is to be near.
So dark is my soul, I cannot reveal
In anguished grief the love I feel.
In time, as it comes, I desperately pray
I will find the words we need to say.
Now we must wait for pain’s release.
Only then, together, finding solace and peace.
Somewhere, beneath grief too heavy to bear,
Know that my love for you is still there.
Tears In my eyes, what's wrong
Sadly people that haven’t experienced this nightmare say stupid things!
Thank you Jordan
I feel
So guilty for grieving, people are sick of it. But I lost a daughter who is alive. They said I had to take God out of the conversation and I refused. 26 months and I haven’t seen or heard from her. She was 14 when they took her. Yet I have our boys who I have raised into men that work, play music, go to college. Even with them refusing to leave they took my baby girl. Jordon it was political. I would not comply to any mandates and they told her I was crazy and was going to kill them by not vaccinating them. Then they vaccinated her without my consent. I have no leg to stand on. Yet I’m not a criminal her father is. They handed her over anyway. I have no idea if she is safe they will not do welfare checks. It’s hell. I can’t live her much longer
What happens when person you turn to and person you really only person you can talk to pulls away from you?
A year to adjust is ridiculous!
I agree. It's absolutely ridiculous. I lost my beloved teenage daughter in January 2023. There's no "adjustment", "getting over it", nothing. We just try to learn to live with our loss.
Peterson = Pillar of humanity