We have found that in our writings we give voice to emotions and thoughts that the non-bereaved rarely consider. As bereaved, we share the knowledge that parents have no real control over their children’s lives. In writing about that fact, we have gained strength and compassion.
Along with speaking to our children through our writings, most of us have tried to communicate with them through psychics with mixed results. As we noted earlier, none of us wants to say straight out that psychics do not have the power to communicate with the beyond. We would like desperately to believe they do have that ability, and we don’t want to jeopardize any possibility that they might be able to put us in touch with our children.
Ariella: “I went to a psychic three weeks after Michael passed. It was very emotional and cathartic. I felt as though I connected and had a conversation with him. I felt he was okay and, most important, that he existed somewhere. As years passed, I began to doubt the ability of the psychics, but I do believe I can communicate with Michael myself.”
Lorenza: “Psychics tell you everything is okay, that your child wants you to go on with your life.”
Audrey: “I never went to a psychic but I wanted to. I contacted one, but you had to call him at a certain time, and then the line was always busy. Still, I think there’s something to it. My husband went and he thought the psychic touched on a lot of different things and knew a lot. The psychic talked of a younger brother my husband lost.”
Maddy: “Some of the psychics hit on things which I have no way of knowing how they knew. I went through two years in which I was convinced Neill died of Marfan’s syndrome, although the doctors said that wasn’t so. Lincoln supposedly had Marfan’s syndrome, and it was thought he might have died of that had he not been shot. And the psychic asked me, ‘Why is Lincoln so important to you?’ Another psychic knew the name of a jeweler I was thinking of contacting.”
Barbara G.: “We had two very good experiences with psychics who knew much about us and about Howie. It brought us comfort and helped us to believe that our child exists in some realm somewhere, that he is aware of what is happening to us here and will be there for a reunion with us someday. I recall Bruce’s comment when we were driving home after one of our meetings with a psychic, ‘What a hell of a way to have to speak to your kid.’”
Others of us, try as we might to believe, are totally unconvinced.
Barbara E.: “We went to three of them. I found you have to give them the right cues. One psychic we sat down with was spurting out all sorts of things. As soon as he saw a little reaction, that’s where he went. So, I sat with no expression. First he said he saw a young woman walking in. I told him I had lost a son. So he said the young woman was leading a young man. Another psychic didn’t know we were Jewish. He told me he could hear my son telling me to put the painting of the Virgin Mary back over my bed.”
We keep photos of our dead children with us each day as well as talismans of our children. We do not broadcast it, but we each have something of our child with us as we go about our daily lives. Whether it be a piece of jewelry, an article of clothing, or something symbolic about their lives, it is with us and it comforts us. No one else need know … so long as we know.
Rita wears Michael’s bracelet. Because Lorenza’s son Marc so loved fishing and died on the water, she wears a pendant that’s embedded with one of her son’s fishing lures. She doesn’t discuss it with anyone; it’s just part of her daily attire.
Lorenza: “I wondered what to do with his clothes. Eventually I made a quilt with different patches of his clothing.”
Audrey: “I used to wear one of Jess’s necklaces until it broke. Now I carry
her key chain and I wear the same perfume she wore. I buy bottles and bottles of it and wherever I go, I wear it. People sometimes ask me about it. I feel as though I am wearing her essence.”
Many of these talismans that we hold dear are reflective of resurrection and hope, such as angels, feathers and butterflies … lots of butterflies.
Barbara Goldstein was filled with conflicting sentiments on the occasion of her youngest son’s wedding. She wore a crystal butterfly on her back just above her strapless gown in tribute to Howie. Guests thought it attractive, and only close family members knew it symbolized her dead son.
Barbara G.: “Such small and inoffensive actions known only to me give me great comfort.”
Carol: “I have a bracelet that Lisa wore. It has a heart missing … as if I have a hole in my heart. I would never get it fixed. I wear it every day.”
Phyllis: “For years I wore Andrea’s bracelet. But when it broke, I did not repair it. It was time to let go.”
When we were newly bereaved we were unable to travel or we used travel only as an escape … unsuccessfully. There was no place to go, no place to hide and nothing we wanted to see. And if we did have to make a trip, perhaps a business trip with a spouse, we recalled little of what we saw or experienced.
Rita: “Initially we tried to run from our pain. We went to Ireland, England, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Mexico, Germany, Hawaii. I remember little of these places. Coming back was so difficult. We never found Michael. We dragged our younger son with us and he later told us he hated it.”
The need to try to run from our grief has been tempered with time.
Barbara E.: “Two years after Brian died, we forced ourselves to take a vacation, thinking it would help bring back some normalcy. We had panic attacks before we left and counted the days until we could come home. It was still too early for us. About a year later, we went away again and began to experience some enjoyment. We still thought about Brian almost constantly, but now they were happier thoughts.”
Now that some of us are again able to travel, we have found the way
to cope and find some fulfillment and interest in the trip is to stop trying to escape and instead to carry our children with us in our hearts, which of course is the easiest thing in the world for us to do.
Barbara G.: “Before we went abroad the first time after Howie’s death, we took a trip to California just to see if we could handle the travel, deal with the hotels, rental cars and flights. When we saw we could, we resumed our trips. When I knew I could look at a beautiful sight and not think first that Howie would never see this, then I could go. I take him wherever I am. I am set on seeing the world for him and myself.”
Several of us used to carry along a photo of our child and place it on the night table in our hotel room. We have reached the point that we still carry their photos, but we need not put them on display. We just feel our children’s presence and it makes the trip not only bearable and interesting, but enjoyable.
Phyllis: “When we return from vacations, I bring rocks or shells to place on Andrea’s gravestone. I don’t need to take her picture along with me now as I did at first.”
When we had to travel early in our grief, even car trips to places within easy distance, we tried to travel only with our spouses or our immediate family or our similarly bereaved friends. That way should some unforeseen sight, smell, event—you name it—give rise to tears, we could return on our own or go off and grieve without destroying someone else’s trip.
Today we can honestly say we have learned to steel ourselves against the triggers of travel. We no longer go on a trip just to escape.
Still, those places where our children died will forever remain places we cannot go. We expect that to be so throughout our lives.
Ironically, some of the things our children excelled at and which we were unable to master during their lifetime have become important hurdles for us to cross … for our children’s sake. These things have become part of our way of coping.
Few of us, for instance, were computer savvy prior to our children’s deaths, and they often kidded us about our inability to master something that came as second nature to them. They all would have enjoyed today’s
computer advances, today’s palm pilots and cell phones that take photographs and do a myriad of other tricks.
As a tribute to our children, most of us have now at least become computer literate. We think our kids must be looking down and getting a kick out of seeing us handling e-mail and the Internet. We do a lot of writing to our children on the computer. It makes for an excellent release of emotions.
Maddy: “One strange thing that has happened is that I’ve become an expert at arcade games. Neill excelled at arcade games and loved to play them. I was terrible. After he died, I began to play for him. Perhaps I look ridiculous, a woman in her fifties at the machines with children and teenagers. But I’m great. I draw a crowd. Kids watch me with awe and tell me how good I am. I smile. I don’t tell them why I play, or why I’m so good, but I know. Neill gave me his gift. I feel so close to him when I’m in an arcade.”
Every bereaved family, whether they have lost a child or a spouse or a parent, will have to learn to cope with the mail. By this we mean the junk mail and the correspondence that continues to come from companies and businesses that have not updated their computerized mailing lists to reflect our children’s deaths. We continue to be bombarded with unsolicited literature, advertising brochures and more. Such mailings can break our hearts.
Audrey: “Just yesterday an advertisement with her name on it came from a store that Jessie liked. I thought about calling them but I didn’t.”
You can if you wish call and ask that your loved one’s name be removed from such mailing lists. It may work; it may not. Sometimes, the larger the company or entity involved, the longer it will take to get results. Ask for the public relations or community relations department of a larger company, and do not hesitate to express your annoyance. Dealing with a clerk or the first person who answers the phone may not bring results.
Lorenza: “Clubs my son belonged to in college would call for years after his death asking for donations. I said, ‘I already told you my son is no longer alive.’ But then there would be a different clerk and they’d call again. But there was a good thing as well. After Marc died, we were contacted to pick up his award from
when he helped put out fires in the pine barrens. We didn’t even know he had done that.”
Political campaigns can be terribly offensive. A call to the candidate’s campaign office that threatens loss of votes from everybody you know may be of some help. Don’t be afraid to be forceful.
Maddy: “For the mayoral campaign Neill got mail. I called up and I was very nice. I told them, ‘If my son were alive, I believe he would be voting for your candidate. But my son is dead for years now and every day when this mail comes it hurts me very much and I want you to stop it.’”
Dealing with insurance monies that came even when we hadn’t expected it or given it a thought can be extremely distressing. In some cases, we just didn’t want to keep the insurance money and found places to put it, such as a scholarship fund in our child’s name. In other cases, there were more appropriate recipients beyond ourselves.
Lorenza: “My son had just gotten married and he never got a chance to change his insurance beneficiary to his wife. So it came to my husband and I. We did the right thing; we gave it to Kate, his widow.”
As we did in the early days following the deaths of our children, we continue to occupy our minds and bodies with our work. It was then and remains a very strong factor in allowing us to contend with life. Keeping busy is the best way to keep sad thoughts from engulfing us. Although we all returned to work in the earlier years, some of us are now at retirement age. Still, we know we must find alternative ways to remain active and occupied.
A number of us have found our way back to fitness and exercise routines, even dance classes, which we now find cathartic for the most part. We care enough about appearances again to try to watch our weight, and one of us who wore her gray hair as something of a symbol of her bereavement looks great with her hair newly dyed a light brown. While black still dominates in our clothes closets, now, too, there are muted beiges and browns and occasionally a pastel, or even a bright red or pink will sneak in. Color has begun to return to our lives. We think our kids must be smiling about that someplace.
As we have said, we sought out the help of psychologists and psychiatrists,
grief counselors, marriage counselors and others. Some of us were helped by them, more of us were not. Instead, we found the counsel, guidance and love of other bereaved parents to be a far better balm than a psychoanalyst’s couch. We didn’t need to be analyzed, we knew the source of our depression; we needed comfort.
Most, but not all of us, tried taking anti-depressants. Some of us still take prescription drugs for mood swings and depression. More of us do not. It is a very personal choice and, of course, varies with each person’s ability to cope.
Phyllis: “I never wanted to take medication. I wanted to feel the pain, to be there.”
Maddy: “Usually if you go to a psychiatrist, they will recommend it. I have been taking medication for several years and find it’s okay to stay on it.”