Bereaved

Please don't wait around wondering when I'm going to act like "myself" again. I will never be my old self again. For better or for worse, that person is gone. This is who I am now.

Please don't judge me if I can't look at your baby. It has nothing to do with my love for them and has everything to do with my love for Eli.   

Please don't think that mentioning Eli's name will make me sad. Please don't think that it will only remind me what has happened. Please don't be naive enough to think that I have forgotten. I don't ever forget. It doesn't mean that I am always sad, but I never forget. 

Please don't think that because he was only a baby I love him any less than you love your children.

Please don't try to make me feel better.  Please don't think that is your responsibility. Please understand that the only thing that would make me completely whole again is to have him.

Please don't be scared of me because I am broken. Please know that God is the only one that can put me back together and I don't expect you to.

Please don't find it odd if I can't listen to your baby cry.  Mine never did.

Please don't tell me that I should feel better because I will get to be with him again. I know that, and sometimes it doesn't make me feel better because I want him right now.  I don't want to have to wait until I'm dead to see him.

Please don't think I am purposely trying to isolate myself.  This is a very isolating situation.

Please don't act bewildered If I look paralyzed and unable to care for myself and my family. I am paralyzed.

Please don't think that my family looks just like it did before with two parents and three children. It has always looked that way to you, but it will never look that way to me. I have 4 children, not 3.  My fourth child died.  I know you may not want to hear that.  It might make you uncomfortable for a moment.  I'm sorry.  I am uncomfortable forever. 

Please don't pretend he never existed.  It might not feel like it to you.  You didn't meet him and hold him and carry him.  It might be different to you because you didn't know him, but it isn't different to me.  I do know him.

Please don't be bothered when it seems as if I am not present.  I am not.  I am trying to live in two worlds at one time.  Please know that you can't understand that until you try to do it.

Please don't think that you are more powerful than God and this could never happen to you.  You may think this is a mother's worse nightmare...but for me it isn't a dream.  I won't wake up. 

Please don't complain about sleepless nights and crying babies.  Please don't.  I wish that those were my problems.  I wish that my lack of sleep had something to do with a baby in my arms. 

Please don' t say I am strong enough to handle this.  Is this a reward for my strength? No one is "strong enough" to bury their child.

Please don't tell me he is in a better place. I put him in a casket and watched them put lid on.

Please don't think that talking about him will make me upset.  It won't.  Please don't think it will make me "remember" what happened if you talk about it.  I haven't forgotten.  He is the only thing I can talk about.

Please don't be uncomfortable if you make me cry.  Not all tears are evil.

Please don't avoid eye contact with me because you are afraid of what you will see.  Please, please don't look away when you see me.  I am not four years old.  I know you saw me.  Please don't treat me like I am invisible.

Please acknowledge that you don't know how I feel. Please don't try to fix this for me. It's not something that can be fixed.

Please don't say, "at least you have 3 kids here..."  No matter how many kids you have, your whole heart breaks when one is gone. 

Please don't say," I don't want to cry in front of you..." Why?  You don't want to show me that his life was precious and has affected you?  Don't you think my son is worthy of at least one tear from you?  I have shed thousands. 

Someone will always be missing. I have been dreaming of this child for years and now that I know him, he is no longer a dream. He is a reality. A reality that doesn't live here anymore.  He is as real to me now as when I held him in my arms. But I can't hold him anymore.  I don't feel any less his mother than I do to my other children, and yet I feel I don't know how to be a mother to him...he who doesn't live here and doesn't need my nurturing. 

  

When you have a baby you take care of every single need.  The need to sleep, eat, be changed and loved and held and rocked.  You take care of a person who is too weak to even hold their own head up or communicate.  You are their caretaker in every sense of the word.  So to trust that child to someone else, is unconscionable.  It is like sending you child to day care without seeing the day care or meeting the staff.  You believe that they are safe.  It makes sense, but when it comes to YOUR child, just "believing" something doesn't feel sufficient.  And, you NEVER get to go back to the daycare and pick them up.  So, don't look around in a stupor if I can't hold my head up or communicate.  The pain that I carry..that I have been carrying for many, many months does not go away.  It doesn't sleep or take a vacation.  It is always with me.  Sometimes I can embrace it.  Sometimes I run away from it.  Sometimes it paralyzes me.  When my eyes are glazed over and it looks like I am not here...it is because I am not.  I am trying to be with him; trying to mother a child that I can't see or hold or touch.  When I don't meet your eyes it is because my whole being is in a different dimension.  I don't live in your world anymore.  I don't live in his world either.  I live somewhere between heaven and earth, unable to completely be in either place. I will never be the same.  I never want to be the same.

Losing a child is one of the cruelest occurrences in nature. It is the most unnatural feeling and when someone tells you it is the "right thing" you wonder how this can be so.  How can something that's right feel so very wrong. It feels like you are literally ripped apart when your child is pulled out of your arms...even if it was by an angel. 

So, 

Thank you for loving me even when I don't appear to love you back.  

Thank you for walking with me on a road that is confusing and dark.

Thank you for trusting me enough to know I will make it safely through this with your help.  Thank you for not trying to fix it.

Thank you for not asking me if I am having another baby...as if having one would somehow replace him.

Thank you for not being offended if I don't call, text, or email you back. Thank you for not expecting that I will tell you everything. 

Thank you for understanding that you don't understand.  You don't.

Thank you for not giving up on me.

Thank you for saying his name.  When you acknowledge him, you acknowledge me.  We are so intertwined that you can't fully acknowledge me without acknowledging him too.  Those names can't be separated right now, just as a nursing baby isn't long separated from his mother.

Thank you for being brave and not running the other way when you see me coming.  

Thank you for loving Eli too, even though loving him may cause you pain.

Thank you to listening to me without judging me.  

Thank you for not taking it personally when I don't want to talk. 

Thank you for allowing me to feel the emotions I feel without thinking that I will always feel that way. 

Thank you for crying.

Thank you for believing that my testimony is strong enough to sustain me, and if it is not, God will sustain me.

Thank you for knowing that I am doing my best.

Thank you for not making this complicated.  It's not complicated.  I love Eli. He is gone.  I am ripped apart.

Thank you for not preaching to me.  Thank you for knowing that the only "preaching" I will listen to is from a credible source... mostly God. 

Thank you for being patient with me.

Thank you for not giving me a timeline for grieving.

Thank you for not forgetting.

Thank you for allowing me to live in the present and not forcing me to look to the future.

Thank you for letting me be selfish right now.

Thank you for not telling me how I should feel or correcting me when I say something that makes you feel uncomfortable.  It makes me feel uncomfortable too, but I can't just plug my ears like you.

Thank you for speaking truth, but not getting mad if I don't want to hear it in that moment. 

Thank you for being God's hands.

Thank you for lowering your expectations of me right now.

Thank you for trying.

Thank you for saying something about him, anything about him...even just his name, when you talk to me.  If I hear his name, I will be able to talk to you.

Thank you for being my friend.  A real friend.

Bereaved literally means: ripped apart.  When  I read that definition, I understood exactly why they use that word. I will always be his mother and he will always be my son.  Pretending like he didn't exist is more painful than his death. Next time you see me, remember that I am a mother, just like you.  I love my children, just like you.  I didn't get special training on how to deal with saying goodbye to my baby and watch someone walk away with his lifeless body.  I am not so different than you, yet completely different now that part of my family lives in heaven.  The bridge of understanding the loss of a child is a one way bridge.  The only way to cross, is by saying goodbye to your child.  If you remain in ignorance, count yourself blessed.  I hope you never cross the bridge.

  -a bereaved mother