Tag Archives: Grief Loss and Bereavement

Loneliness

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in emotional needs, grief and loss, Guest Post, losing mom too soon, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Driftwood

photo by Tom Burke – Flickr

Loneliness. Life involves times of loss, times when we find ourselves alone with our memories. If you’ve lost a loved one—a mother or father, a spouse, or a child—you know that loneliness can wear at you and tear at you. This kind of loneliness is described in the guest post below, written by my father. He describes his feelings after my mother died.

Guest-Post-logo
In sorting through a box of old things, I recently came across this poem I wrote a few months after my first wife passed away.
~ ~
 LONELINESS
~ ~
The edge of loneliness
Wears at me,
Tears at me,
Wearies me.
Memories of shared moments
Leave me with emptiness.
Laughter of the past
Echoes in the empty rooms of my empty heart.
Fires kindle momentarily
With love’s memory
Then subside
Like burned out coals upon the cold hearth.
A chill creeps over me
As winter winds blow gusty
Against my quavering soul.
Brown fallen leaves
Careen with death rattle along the street,
And my spirit dries and
Blows with them into the gutter.
I feel passed up, unwanted,
Unremembered, unloved.
 ~ ~ ~
About the same time I wrote this poem, I took a walk on a beach in Oregon near my home. I picked up a piece of driftwood in the shape of a whale. One side even had an “eye.” I took it home with me and wrote on a scrap of paper: “The fury of storm and tide has made me what I am.” And, “I am what I have had the good fortune of becoming.”
~ ~
I didn’t understand it right then, but much like the processes of water, wind and sand on that driftwood, the grief process was
re-shaping me. Perhaps the psalmist felt lonely and forsaken when he said, “Out of the depths have I cried unto You.” Then there’s Jonah in the darkness, helplessness, and isolation of the whale’s belly. When Jonah came out, he became one of the most successful preachers of all time. As a result of his ministry, a whole city repented and turned to God.
~ ~
Someone said, “When bad things happen to good people, they
become better people.” Of many an older saint it could be said,
“Once young and carefree, now buffeted into a work of art.”
~ ~
So what is your ocean, and what are you becoming? Sculptured by time and the elements, a thing of beauty? Then someday you can say, “The fury of storm and tide has made me what I am.”
~ ~
~G. H. Cummings

G.H. Cummings is a 92-year-old retired pastor and counselor. He is the author of Making It In Marriage : It’s Worth the Effort (Cladach, 2002). This post is excerpted from his e-book, I Was Just Thinking, available as a free download (pdf) here.

Not Forsaken

12 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by in Adopted children, childhood memories, emotional needs, God as our parent, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, Remembering Mother, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Imogene-just-adopted

I watched an Irish movie that brought tears to my eyes and reminded me of my mother’s story. The movie was based on a true story of an impoverished family where the mother dies and the father runs off and doesn’t care of the children, who are taken into custody by the state and placed in orphanages.

The same thing happened to my mother and her siblings, only it wasn’t in Ireland. It was in Colorado. She was the age my littlest granddaughter is now—almost two years old—when she and her siblings were taken into custody by the Otero County Court. The judge declared them “neglected children” and wards of the state until age 21. Mother’s one sister and two brothers were sent to the Denver Children’s Home, but just in time a childless couple adopted her. And though she never saw her siblings again, she was raised by loving Christian parents and grew up to be a self-sacrificing, loving pastor’s wife. This is an old photo of her the day she was adopted. Her adoptive parents found her dirty and frightened.

Some things have come full circle. Since I moved back to Colorado, I have found Mother’s birth family.  Our son, who is a lawyer, has done pro bono work representing neglected children who have no legal representation.

Though Mother has been gone from us over 38 years now, I never want to forget how God rescued a sad little girl whose mother had died of TB and whose father had run off to find work or something in that dust bowl era. I never want to take for granted the way God rescues us, provides for us, gives us people to love and be loved by.

I remember Mother smiling through tears of blessing as she sang, “A tent or a cottage, why should I care? They’re building a mansion for me over there. Though exiled from home, yet still I will sing, All glory to God, I’m a child of the King.”

~Catherine Lawton

Anonymous Graveside Flowers and the Eternal Now

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Adopted children, childhood memories, encouraging each other, grief and loss, Influence of Grandparents, reach out and touch, the healing journey

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Inskeep-graveside

My sister (right) and me at our grandparents’ grave

My sister, Beverly, visited me this month and we took a trip to the town where our grandparents lived. We searched the cemetery until we found their grave sites. Grandpa died about the time I got married. Grandma died just before I gave birth to my daughter. As I was moving forward in my own life, their earthly lives were ending. So the generations go. Walter and Edith Inskeep adopted our mother as a small child. They provided a loving and secure upbringing for her; and they gave my sister and me unmatched affection as the grandparents of our youth.

For Beverly and me, finding our grandparents’ graves and their tiny, now-rundown house, was a pilgrimage. These humble, hard-working, faithful people poured unconditional love and encouragement into our early lives. Since Mother was raised an only child then died quite young (in 1977), we lost contact with the extended family of Inskeeps.

Maybe that’s why it meant so much to see that someone, after all these years, had placed flowers on their graves.

Every Inskeep grave we found had flowers. Seeing those flowers after almost 40 years, did something for my heart. Those flowers made me feel:

  • Comforted. When I am too far away to show honor to the memory of those who loved and prayed for and cared for me, someone nearby is doing just that.
  • Connected, somehow, with the living as well as the dead.
  • Concrete Immediacy. I cherish the memories and the photos of long-ago departed, dear loved ones; but the memories grow more and more distant and far away. Those flowers carefully placed by human hands at the graveside gave me a sense of Now.

I wished for a way to say thank-you to the anonymous flower tender. I pray that every time the anonymous person tends those flowers, God will fill their heart with hope and a sense of the eternal now and eternal connectedness for honoring the memory of such good people.

~Catherine Lawton

Compassion~ An Upside of Tragedy

19 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by in encouraging each other, grief and loss, reach out and touch, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Yesterday, a woman in a rural area of Northern California, where communities and farmers have been stricken by the devastating wildfires, shared her video of help arriving. I’m used to people sharing videos on Facebook, and I often scroll right past them. But when a dear friend posted this video on my wall yesterday, I was compelled to watch it, and my heart was touched on several levels.

The woman who recorded this video was expressing her amazement and thanks for the people from nearby North Lake County and Humboldt County (Fortuna, Ferndale and Eureka)— who caravaned over the hills, south and east to fire-striken Middletown, bringing truckloads of clothing, toiletries, pet food, farm animal feed, hay for horses and cattle, as well as farm equipment and relief workers. Watch the joyful arrival here:

 

My friend shared this with me because she knew my husband’s family has deep roots in the village of Ferndale and I lived during my youth in Fortuna (which was part of my story in Journeys to Mother Love). When my husband and I go back to visit that rugged and beautiful region, we are reminded of the resilience and strength of the people there who have suffered many natural disasters (extreme floods and earthquakes) as well as lasting economic downturns. Those folk know what it’s like to lose so much and be so grateful when help comes. Now they are jumping at the chance to give back.

Experiencing this generosity of spirit truly is an up side of going through such loss as the fire victims have. I relate to this partly because of my own experience as a young child when our house burned down in the night. We lost everything and were “homeless” and dependent on others for a while. But, in spite of the effects of the trauma of barely escaping from a burning house, I am thankful to have experienced the overwhelming outpouring of love and generosity, from the community and from area churches, toward our little family.

This personal video posted on Facebook (with a public setting) definitely touched a nerve with me. I know, there is always more to every story. And we may never know “the rest of the story” of this particular person who took the video. But we can have our hearts lifted by her very real and immediate response to compassionate help arriving on the scene of her need and the needs of her community. And that gives us a glimpse of the goodness that still exists in this world.

The sometimes-uncomfortable but inescapable fact is that compassion is often developed in extremely difficult situations and life experiences.

My prayer: “Lord, help me grow stronger in grace and compassion, more resilient and giving, as a result of the batterings of this life. Thank you for the surprises of help and encouragement you bring along the way.”

~Catherine Lawton

Healing Grace Like Gentle Rain

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in childhood memories, emotional needs, God's healing love, grief and loss, Inner healing ministry, losing mom too soon, mother wounds, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

In Journeys to Mother Love I tell of how I lost my mother at a young age, and I hint at generational blessings as well as generational sins, “curses,” and weaknesses that needed breaking and healing.

When Mother died at age 48, and my dad went through his own bereavement and grief, it seemed the feelings from wounds he experienced as a boy threatened to overtake him again. A new grief will open past griefs and wounds that have been lying dormant but in need of deeper healing.

Feelings that came as a result of growing up with a mother who was beautiful and gentle but unable to show affection to her son, and an overbearing father whose domination turned to cruelty at times, resurfaced. During those months as a widower, my dad sought and experienced deeper healing by the Holy Spirit that gave him more freedom, joy, and wholeness, so he could move on in life and receive and share God’s love.

During that time, he was writing poems. In my experience, and others I know, poetry can be therapeutic and healing in many ways. I’ll share one of those poems here:

———————————————————————————————————————

The Gentle Life

~ ~ ~

The fine, soft, falling mist

soaks finally better than the deluge.

So the life tender and gentle

in love of God

has force in it

that gets through hardest soil

for lasting good—

better than

the mighty in the flesh.

–G.H. Cummings

~ ~ ~

~Catherine Lawton

A Grief That Can’t be Spoken

02 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by in challenges of motherhood, God's healing love, grief and loss, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Rose Kennedy, holding Joe Jr., presumably prio...

Rose Kennedy, holding Joe Jr., presumably prior to 1921. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ARC194183

President John F. Kennedy and his mother, Rose (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When my birthday rolled around this year on November 22, I was reminded again of the significance of that day in history. It was on my fourth birthday in 1963 that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and I remember it well.

I hadn’t heard the word “assassinate” before that day. The sorrow that gripped my family also gripped the nation. I didn’t like it. I wanted it to go away. But every day the television was awash in news stories as the nation prepared to bury our president.

Four days in history. Four days in mourning. Four days that shook our nation and the world, now commemorated 50 years ago.

My birthday link to the Kennedys left me with a fascination for this public family. I collected books and commemorative magazines over the years. The grief of the nation and the grief of the Kennedy family didn’t end with JFK’s death. Less than five years later we witnessed another horrific Kennedy assassination when Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, was killed. Our nation grieved with the passing of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, JFK’s widow, in 1994. Then in 1999, the unthinkable happened when JFK, Jr. died in a tragic plane crash over the Atlantic. More sorrow. More grief.

There’s a song in Les Miserable called “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” that Marius, the sole survivor of the student revolt, sings after the heart-breaking massacre of all his friends. Two lines of that song stand out to me and aptly describe the grief of our nation. “There’s a grief that can’t be spoken. There’s a pain goes on and on.” Haunting words in his unfathomable predicament—fighting his guilt while also embracing the newfound love of his soon to be bride, Cosette.

These words ring true to me as I think of the Kennedy family and their grief. How does a mother like Rose Kennedy live with the grief of losing two sons to the bullet of an assassin? She had already lost two of her nine children to tragic plane crashes in the 1940s. Surely this was “a grief that can’t be spoken.” Yet she survived and lived to a ripe old age of 104.

It takes an amazing amount of faith and perseverance to endure that kind of loss. As mothers we feel the pain of our children’s hurts and disappointments—from the pain of a scraped knee to the hurt and rejection of bullying words voiced in school. But we were never meant to watch our children precede us in death.

Thankfully I’ve never experienced that kind of grief. I can only provide prayer, compassion, and sympathy to those who have. Like Rose Kennedy, whose faith got her through the pain and heartache shared by the nation, we can turn to the God of all comfort when life turns tragically wrong and we enter into a season with “a grief that can’t be spoken.”

“For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.” (Lamentations 3:31-33, NIV)

~ Ardis A. Nelson

Exaggerated Memories

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in emotional needs, forgiving mom, Learning to appreciate Mom, losing mom too soon, the healing journey

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Lilies

In The Secret Life of Bees, the girl Lily deals with feelings of guilt, anger, and forsakenness after her mother’s death. At the end of the story she says:

“I keep my mother’s things on a special shelf in my room…. The feeling that they are holy objects is already starting to wear off…. In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.” (from The Secret Life of Bees, p. 301)

After a loved one dies we tend to idealize that person. In our minds we exaggerate their positive qualities and minimize—maybe for a while we even forget—their negative qualities. I knew a mother whose young son died in a Boy Scout hiking accident. Even after ten years she hadn’t moved anything in his bedroom. And no one else was allowed in there. That space, his things, and those memories were sacrosanct.

At the beginning of The Secret Life of Bees Lily treats the few things she has left that belonged to her mother as holy objects, buried secretly in a treasure box. By the end of the book Lily keeps these objects on a shelf like other possessions, and she is even beginning to let her friends touch them.

In the book, Motherless Daughters, author Hope Edelman says, “Like anger, idealization is a normal and useful early response to loss. Focusing on a mother’s good traits reaffirms the importance of her presence, and processing the happy side of a relationship is a gentle way to activate mourning. But every human relationship is affected by ambivalence, every mother an amalgam of the good and the bad” (p. 19). Ms. Edelman explains that if we are to mourn our mothers fully, we need to look back and “acknowledge the flip sides of perfection and love.” Otherwise we will be remembering our mothers as only half of what they were, and even ending up mourning a caricature, not the person who was your mother.

My mother died young, before I had matured in my understanding of her and ability to relate to her. I was stuck in my needy grief as long as I memorialized her in my mind as perfect, almost hallowed. Coming to remember, love, and appreciate my mother as a multi-faceted, even flawed woman (albeit one who loved a perfectly loving and holy God) has helped me move through the grief to a place where I can live and love much more freely.

~ Catherine Lawton