Audrey: “Celebrating my own birthday is gut-wrenching. But it gives me deep pleasure remembering the gleam in Jess’s eyes as she gave me a gift. Now much of the joy I get on that day is vicarious. For instance, I take joy in bringing pleasure to my loved ones. I feel Jess’s radiant smile beaming down on me.”
Carol: “I savor the memory of my last birthday with Lisa, which was five days before she died. I save the blouse she gave me as a gift. I don’t wear it. I look at it in my closet. The first couple of years, I didn’t want presents, a cake, or anything.”
Phyllis: “I can’t deal with a big birthday celebration or parties in my honor. I take celebrations in small doses now.”
Rita: “The year before Michael died, he, his brother and his father made a surprise birthday party for me. Michael was so tickled to have done this. I remember how he looked as I walked in. I miss that love from him.”
Ariella: “My birthday is in February, as was Michael’s and my father’s. They’re both gone now. Bob gives me a gift in Michael’s name. It touches me, but still it is difficult to celebrate.”
Most of us keep the memory of our children alive in the minds of others by giving gifts in their names that are symbolic, such as butterflies or angels.
And then there are the balloons. Balloons are free, they are beautiful, they dance. Balloons romp about as if they are having fun and … best of all … they float toward heaven. Balloons are for us a means of communicating with our children. We set balloons free as a way of greeting our lost children and sending our love up to them.
It has, in fact, become the focus of our New Year’s Eve celebration. Each year, we gather together along with our spouses at the home of one of our close-knit group. We write messages on the balloons and release
them into the sky at the stroke of midnight. It lifts our hearts and our spirits and is a positive way of welcoming in the new year.
We negotiate our way through the holidays, birthdays and anniversaries in other ways as well. Unless forced to do so for family reasons beyond our control, we will not go to a restaurant on Mother’s Day.
Lorenza: “One time we went to a restaurant on Mother’s Day, and the waitress asked if we had any mothers at our table. I told her no.”
Barbara E.: “They hand you a flower, and you want to take that flower and tell them to stuff it.”
Phyllis: “I go right to the cemetery with the flower they give me.”
One of us was able to again mark the Passover holiday, which she and her family had been unable to bear doing for several years, by honoring her deceased son at the seder table.
Maddy: “Spring brings Passover, and at the Passover seder we read of the ten plagues, the worst of them being the slaying of the first-born son. Moses told the Jews in ancient Egypt to put lamb’s blood on their doorposts so their homes would be passed over and their sons would be spared. Why wasn’t my son spared? I skipped Passover seders for years after Neill’s death. But my husband then decided to begin having seders in our home. To my surprise, it has worked out. Now we honor Neill in many ways. It is traditional to set out a glass of wine for the prophet Elijah. I set one out for Neill as well, using a glass with the logo of his beloved Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute imprinted on it. And I busy myself in the kitchen, out of earshot of the reading of passages that would upset me.”
Audrey: “The memory of Jessie making the traditional Passover charoses in her own special way and the empty seat at the table rendered me incapable of making the seder meal for the first seven years.”
No matter the religion or the manner of observance, if it is something that simply cannot be ignored, then the way to survive it is to change the tradition.
Barbara E.: “We don’t celebrate holidays on the traditional date anymore. We get together on the day after.”
Lorenza: “After Marc’s death, we could no longer go out and buy a Christmas tree. Traditionally, we used to go out as a family and Marc would help in the
selection. So we started a new tradition. We had a white pine that grew in a pot outside our home. We began bringing it in at Christmas time and decorating it with seashell ornaments that my husband made. We later gave the ornaments to friends and family in Marc’s memory for their Christmas trees. And then, this year, we decided to donate the white pine tree to a children’s school to help beautify their grounds.”
Ariella’s son Michael was an only child. She and her husband have found the most comfortable way in which they can mark holidays is to ignore them whenever they can, an option only because they have no other children.
Ariella: “Bob and I made decisions about dealing with holidays. We were on the same page. We agreed to cancel holidays because we could. Michael passed away in March and the first Mother’s Day was horrible. On the first Father’s Day, I ‘asked’ Michael to help me pick something for his Dad. I decided to buy him some tapes, something that played an important role in Michael’s life. Michael had a boom box and I found four CDs there. I heard the song “You Gotta Be Strong.” It blew me away that this was the last song he was listening to before his death. I cried more that day than ever.”
Of course when there are other children to consider, ignoring holidays is not always a realistic or feasible alternative. Oftentimes we must overcome our own emotions and dreads and give precedence to the thoughts and feelings of surviving children.
Barbara G.: “That first Chanukah after Howie died I did not want to light candles. I could not celebrate. But my youngest son wanted to carry on the tradition. I spoke to my counselor about it. She said I must; she said that I dare not darken the holiday of lights for my son.”
Carol: “We have two other children and five grandchildren. It was too agonizing for me to make that first seder meal after Lisa died, so we invited everyone to come to a catering place. It was painful, but not as bad as it would have been at home. Then, a few years later, my eldest grandson—he was ten at the time—objected. He wanted Thanksgiving at home. So I did it for him. Now we have the seder at home, too, and I mention Lisa. I’m glad we were able to bring the holidays home again.”
Audrey: “The holidays held so many family traditions. They would have
been traditions passed down to my child. Now they have lost most of their meaning. They have become so sorrowful. We’ve tried to make new traditions. For several years, we took the family skiing at Thanksgiving time instead of staying home. Spending time with my daughter Deborah and my grandchildren brings me comfort.”
Barbara E.: “At holidays during that first year, we didn’t mention Brian’s name out loud. Everyone thought about him, but we were all afraid to say his name for fear we would break down. Brian has twin cousins born eighteen months after he died. They never knew him, but they have helped our family to talk again about Brian. They wanted to hear about ‘the boy in the pictures, the boy who had the bedroom with the closed door, the boy whose name made Aunt Barbara cry.’ I found I was able to tell them about Brian’s illness and how I felt about his death. They listened intently and I felt safe in talking with them. Eventually, it led to my being able to talk to others as well.”
While traveling in the early days of bereavement offers no relief, with time, traveling can become a way to remove some of the pressures and stress of dealing with family and holiday traditions.
Lorenza: “We thought to go out and look for a small town without holiday spirit.”
Vacations, of course, often remind us of vacations taken when our children were young. As we mentioned previously, we cannot go to the locations, sometimes not even to the state, where our children died; we also cannot go to destinations we visited with them that hold remembrances of happy family times. When we travel today, we prefer to go where we have never been before; brand-new places do not conjure up images we cannot bear to revisit.
Maddy is greatly comforted by the Compassionate Friends conferences, be they national or regional. Consequently, she and her husband Cliff often plan a vacation around a conference, attendance at which she describes as a “shot in the arm.”
When bereaved parents meet and discuss their own coping measures, they are able to share ideas for getting through those days we would rather forget. Sometimes it is the smallest and most insignificant hint that turns out to be a major boost.
Maddy: “Calendars became my enemies. I always looked forward to new calendars as reminders of upcoming pleasant events. Now they are a painful reminder of what once was and will be no longer.The best calendars I’ve had since Neill’s death were sent to me by a woman in England. She too is a bereaved mother. The English calendars are great because their holidays are different from ours. There is no Memorial Day, Independence Day or Thanksgiving to mock me.”
Not a holiday, not a family memory from the past, but a day that becomes forevermore etched into our very being is the anniversary of our child’s death. The first anniversary is particularly brutal. And when it occurs at the time of a traditional holiday, as it does for some of us, when everyone else is celebrating, it can be particularly gut-wrenching. Lisa Barkin Gootman and Jessica Cohen were both buried as the rest of the country was celebrating the Fourth of July. Michael Long died on St. Patrick’s Day.
Ariella: “I remember on the first anniversary of Michael’s death we didn’t know what we would do. And people just started coming. They came with flowers, with presents, neighbors, friends, people I didn’t expect. We thanked Michael. We felt he had orchestrated the entire day.”
Barbara G.: “The first anniversary of Howie’s death fell on Yom Kippur and the cemetery was closed. We went there anyway, and although the gates were closed, we saw a slight opening. We pushed ourselves through. It was something we had learned about from other parents at a Compassionate Friends meeting.”
Phyllis: “On the first anniversary, we held a memorial service in our home. Family and friends came. A friend led a prayer service. That’s what we did … I didn’t know what else to do.”
While it is not required in the Jewish religion that an unveiling of the headstone occur on the first anniversary of a death, some families prefer to do so, and the practice has become something of a tradition. The Eisenbergs followed the tradition.
Barbara E.: “We decided to have a small unveiling, just the immediate family. I didn’t call anybody or make it known. But I was overwhelmed when all Brian’s friends showed up. I don’t like to speak publicly, but I wrote something
and spoke at the unveiling in the cemetery prior to going back to our house. A portion of what I said follows:”
You all know how competitive Brian was. How important it was for him to win. We’re finding it hard to throw out anything that belonged to him, especially things that he worked so hard to get and that meant so much to him. We would like to share these trophies, which were so dear to him, with his friends. Please think of them as a memento of a young friend who showed such inner strength and who faced everything with spirit, determination and courage.
Please try and do a mitzvot everyday—just a small good deed, and say, “This is for my friend Brian,” who didn’t have the opportunity to do enough of his own good deeds. Think of him often and we know he will smile down on you.
“The unveiling was the only time our daughter went to the cemetery. At first Mike and I used to go there regularly. I would go with him because I was afraid to go alone. But after a year, I started going alone. It was quite emotional. I would cry on my way there and talk to Brian. Now I can go and I’m not afraid.”
We employ the coping mechanisms that we use on a day-to-day basis to get through death anniversaries as well. On that day, we might go out and buy something we know our child would have enjoyed, or do something they liked to do. We use the anniversary to remember our children in solemn ways as well. The Collettis, for instance, started the Marc Colletti Environmental Fund, because Marc who died in a fishing accident, loved the water.
Lorenza: “We have a fishing outing for underprivileged children that we sponsor in early September, just before the anniversary of Marc’s death. We have a marine biologist on board the boat to teach the children about the ecosystem and marine life, things which were so dear to Marc. The event keeps our minds focused, and we are comforted by the thought that we are keeping his dream alive.”
On the first anniversary of Marc’s death, his widow Kate planned a
beautiful and touching ceremony. Family and friends gathered by the water’s edge where his coworkers had placed a plaque on a large boulder in Marc’s memory. Kate read a poem and all those in attendance left a flower at the boulder. Everyone then attended a very moving church mass in Marc’s memory, also planned in every detail by Kate.
At a luncheon following the mass, Kate showed a video she had commissioned depicting Marc’s life from his birth to the time of his death. Lorenza recalled being surprised to see footage of her son bungee jumping, something that she had always cautioned him against doing. It brought both smiles and tears to everybody in the room.