Reply To: Buried my son on xmas eve

[childatheart]

Hi again Moon!

I promised myself that I would come back and get more involved with what other are going through and after just reading your story, I was speechless. It took a few moments for me to come up with the words I wish to express to you here.

First of all I am sorry for your loss and I know that those words can sounds cheap or even like a broken record sometimes when we have experienced loss and grief first hand, but nevertheless I mean them all the same.

Allow me to apologise in advance if this a) becomes long or b) refers back to my situation but of course this is how I can relate to yours.

There’s a song by the band Radiohead that is called how to disappear completely and I used to listen to that song a lot when I was depressed (I have depression and GAD) long before my parents got sick (terminal illness as you have already read about previously) and after they passed I found myself going back to that song and I commented about it and I had a few replies with sympathy as well as one who was sharing their story about how their parents had died suddenly and how I was lucky that I got to say goodbye to mine. I responded explaining that I didn’t see it as luck and getting to say goodbye wasn’t something I was ready to do nor do I feel better now having gotten to. My point to mentioning this and this is not to devalue other peoples feelings or their experiences with loss and grief, is that seeing somebody you love in and out of hospital, going through treatments and on more medication than you’ve probably ever seen in your life before, makes it extremely difficult. Especially when you see somebody you know known your whole life gradually change through the effects of the sickness and the treatments. One of the medications my father was on for his Cancer literally said “may cause death” and back then and in that moment, I realised just how real this all was and what was happening wasn’t a bad dream. I feel like seeing my parents decline and become less like the people I knew, or rather struggling to hold on to who they were and my father going in and out of hospital, surgery and through all the different treatments, was a pre-grief to the actual grief? Somehow I feel like you would understand what I mean when I say that.

I think I am having to come to terms with the fact that I will never put this to rest because the simple fact is, I love them. They were my parents they were a big part of my life and the simple fact is that love prevails. I think what we can try our best to do is make peace with what we can but have the understanding that although we may reach a point one day where maybe we don’t cry anymore at the mere mention of their name or the look back on a memory, that the pain may still exist but that is ok. I think as much as it may seem like healing means moving on as best we can and forgiving the way in which they passed or how they were taken too soon, it is also a process of forgiving ourselves. I feel like everybody wants me already healed and moved on and I am struggling I’ll admit to make that peace, but at the end of the day I love them and I can’t be to blame for that nor can anybody blame me.

Look after yourself and many hugs to you. <3 <3