blogs

In the first two years after Ryan’s death, I read dozens of books on grief. Books were one of the only places I found a modicum of peace. Somehow reading about others’ losses helped dilute mine a bit. One of the quotes I read was from Danielle Steele. She said “Losing a child is 9 parts horror and 1 part gift.” I have been searching for the “gift part” ever since.

Now that I’m past the shock of Ryan’s sudden death and well into the third year of my loss, I am no longer reverberating from the jolt nor am I walking through life in a zombie like trance. I am living my new reality. And in that reality the “gift”, if you can ever call it that, is my highly tuned sensitivity to the suffering of others.

Unfortunately before we suffer our own profound loss, we go through life feeling entitled to the many blessings in our life. The more blessed we are, the more deserving we feel. It’s unfortunate but it’s true and unavoidable. Not until we have experienced our own hearty dose of suffering can we relate to the pain of others in more than a cursory way. Until we have our “turn in the barrel” we are largely oblivious to the suffering of those around us.

In my new life, I cringe inwardly when people talk about their kids – especially their young adult kids or college age kids. I can barely hold it all together during those conversations but I am getting better at it. It is human nature to think our own pain & suffering is worse than anyone else’s. I admit to being a grief snob. I freely admit to thinking only other bereaved parents have a clue how devastating my loss is. Yet cognitively I know there are many others out there hurting badly from their own losses. And those losses come in many flavors, shapes & sizes.

I sometimes feel ashamed of myself when I look back on my old life. I had it all and I’m sure I must have been insufferable to those who didn’t. I now think of women who wanted children and couldn’t have them; women who wanted a husband and family yet never found the right person and remained single; women who miscarried more than once and never delivered a baby; women who gave birth to seriously handicapped children and devoted their lives to caring for those special needs children. Life so rarely turns out the way we envision it will when we are little girls dreaming of our perfect future. I now try to remind myself daily that I’m not the only one who is living a life that didn’t turn out the way we thought it would Many of my friends have beautiful, intact families with smart, accomplished, beautiful children. I confess I am jealous of them yet I am happy for them at the same time. But my heart is with those friends – many of them new friends from the past 2 ½ years – who have had their hearts broken into a million pieces. My heart is with the sufferers. And I don’t have to look very far to find them.