Don: “Those doctors who have a heart, have a heart. Those who clinically don’t have a heart, never will. Maybe they’re in the wrong profession.”
Joe: “Maybe they’re incapable of showing their sensitivity.”
Don: “Then they shouldn’t be there … . It’s part of what makes the patient get better.”
Did we rail against our wives as well? How did our marriages fare from our points of view?
Irv: “I think there’s a natural inclination to want to be closer. But a lot of times Audrey’s depression has been a problem. Now she’s gone back on antidepressants and she’s back to being herself; I feel much more loving and amorous toward her. For a time, her grief was so bad that I’d walk into the house and feel she was loaded for bear. All I had to do was open my mouth and she let me have it.”
Mike: “Barbara didn’t want to go on antidepressants. She wanted to feel the pain and it went on and on and on. It pushed us further apart. I couldn’t stand watching her pain. I needed to isolate myself until one day she decided she would take medication and then the real Barbara reappeared.”
Tom: “I was angry and we had problems, but my wife is the only woman who knew Michael. I can’t say that we’re closer or further apart. We live more separate lives than we did then. We’re at different stages in our lives, we were caught up in raising our children, now we’re at a different place. We are not really living our lives at our capacity, as we should be. We don’t travel. I would like to buy a boat. We seem stuck.”
Bruce: “We never separated or anything, but it depends on how you define separate ways. At the end of the day, in that first year especially, Barbara wanted to be alone. She would go off into one part of the house and I would go off into another. She would fall asleep wherever she was and I on the couch where I was. It wasn’t so much going away from the other person as it was wanting to be alone with our thoughts, and not having the energy to have more than the thoughts which were focused on Howie. We sought out counseling when we saw the mind-boggling statistics of bereaved couples that had broken up completely, a 90 percent break-up rate.”
Cliff: “There’s not a day goes by that Maddy and I don’t fight, but I think that’s pretty normal. What my snapshot was when I moved in was, ‘Wow, I have a great woman and an instant family. We’ll work out this other thing with the other father.’ That’s not what panned out. But I respect myself and my sense of what I want to do. I make the choice. If I hated it so much, nothing is stopping me from walking out the door. And my choice to stay says everything. If I’m going to stay then I have to accept everything and make the changes I can make. I’m the third parent, which puts me in a less potent position. That’s the choice and that’s the deal that I’ve got and that’s what I’m going to play. I love Maddy and she loves me and I loved Neill as much as he would let me, and that’s what I play with. The pain is real and waking up with the same anguish as the other dads is real and it’s my choice to stick it out.”
Don: “I give you a lot of credit. A lot of men would have walked out. You’re dealing with a tough situation. Her anguish is the biggest part of your life.”
We asked each other whether mothers or fathers feel greater pain after the loss of a child, and then we asked each other if we could even offer up judgment on such a topic. We agreed and we disagreed. Some of us maintained that because our wives physically carried the child for nine months, delivered the child, and were the primary nurturers during the developing years, a mother and child bond was created that could not be equaled in a father and child relationship. Others disagreed heartily, saying they felt a closeness that in several cases was even greater than the ties between their child and their wife. We concurred that certainly women invest greater time and energy in raising a child, while men act as the protectors and providers. But we differed on whether any of that would necessarily translate into a greater love. We felt that dissimilar relationships evolved simply from raising daughters or sons. There is always that “guy thing” to consider.
Joe: “I feel bad when I think of promises unfulfilled, of joys not shared, of what could have been but never will be. I inherited tools and a pocket watch from my father and he from his father. Who shall inherit these now? With whom can I share the joy, the euphoria, if the Giants win the Superbowl?”
And then we argued that to say even that was to generalize. Obviously, we are not of one mind on the issue.
We became acquainted with one another through the same channel in which our wives met, the Compassionate Friends bereavement group. Some of us were led to Compassionate Friends by our wives, some of us led our wives there. We also have been to bereavement counselors, marriage counselors and psychics. Several of us were helped by these various avenues, others were not.
But we have all found it necessary to commune with other bereaved parents. Whether it be in an organized format or not, everybody needs someone to talk to, and only those who are speaking the same language—in this case the language of the parent who has lost a child—can hold a truly relevant discourse.
Bob: “Talking to people who are not aggrieved is akin to someone giving you a cookbook when you have a flat tire. They mean well, but it doesn’t help.”
Bruce: “We went to a support group and a private bereavement counselor who met with a few couples at one time. It was helpful in that you got a chance to say what was on your mind, and even if you were not verbal, you could identify with what somebody said. With Compassionate Friends and other groups, you find others have the same feelings, that you are not crazy or that your partner’s feelings are not some aberration that is so far out of what can be expected that you have to worry about the mental health of the individual. It’s drummed into you that each bereaved person is going down this track at their own speed, and while you all reach the various stations on that track, you reach them at different times. Some people stop at one station longer than others and then they move on.”
“Basically a support group is a validation of what you’re thinking and feeling, and that’s where it’s most helpful. For some people, it becomes a way of life and almost a substitute for the nearness of your child.”
Joe: “The first people we phoned were the Compassionate Friends. We read about them in a magazine. They came right over.”
Bob: “We were led to Compassionate Friends. It was a roadmap after the first couple of meetings when we just looked at the floor. The only relief is when you are with the Compassionate Friends.”
Mel: “Phyllis took me to Compassionate Friends; truthfully, I got nothing out of it.”
Mike: “Toward the end of the first year, I started to fall apart. I needed support from people and Compassionate Friends helped me to realize I wasn’t going crazy and that other men had similar situations. It was comforting to be in the middle of something supportive. I’d never had that feeling before.”
Tom: “I remember attending a bereavement conference in North Carolina. I went in laughing with a friend. The seminar was on guilt. This woman was telling about losing her two children in a fire that was her fault. She’d put a cloth over a lampshade because the lamp was too bright. The facilitator talked of how he’d picked up a prescription a doctor had prescribed for his daughter who was sick. It was the wrong dosage and his daughter died. He blamed himself for not checking the label, for not tasting the medicine. It was all irrational, but he blamed himself; he became an alcoholic, he lost his job, his wife left him. I started to talk about my own guilt and fifteen minutes after I walked in laughing, I’m crying uncontrollably. I wasn’t that different from that man. I had been denying my feelings. That meeting brought them to the surface.”
Joe: “We used to go to the Compassionate Friends meetings and it was very draining. It would cause a sleepless night, but still it helped you to identify and find you were not going nuts. There’s a camaraderie in that.”
Tom: “I hardly ever attend Compassionate Friends meetings now, but when I get talking with a group like this a funny thing happens … . this is starting to hurt. I used to get into my angry mode, now I switch into a gratitude mode. I went to a therapist; he said the only way out of this anger is through gratitude. It stuck with me. I could have remained angry the rest of my life and destroyed my marriage. I had my son for twenty years. My life changed when I had him and my life changed again when he died. I grew up with his death. I have to tell myself that to stay out of pain.”
Joe: “My daughter sent me to a psychologist and then a psychiatrist. He said I didn’t have clinical depression, that I was just grieving greatly. He asked if I wanted a little Prozac to please my daughter. I said yes. I took it and gave it to somebody else. I think they gave it to their dog.”
Bruce: “We went a couple of times to the psychic. You go there with half of you saying this is a charlatan, that it’s smoke and mirrors, and part of you saying it’s got to be right because I’ll take any avenue to see, smell, feel my child again. Some of what they say you can sluff off as a good interviewer giving back
to you most of the information you give them. But there are a few parts where they have no reason to know. It gives you something to hang on to; it’s temporary to a great extent, but you suddenly feel there is a next step and you will meet up with your child and spend all eternity with them. That goes away after awhile, and your logical more earthly self comes out.”
“The second time we went to a psychic, we walked in and in less than thirty seconds he said, ‘Your son is showing me his name as a question mark.’ Well, we always referred to Howie as How. Another psychic told us she saw the letter
H
on my face. So you can intellectually debunk 95 percent of it, the other 5 percent can either give you cause for concern or cause for hope, whatever way you are feeling.”
Don: “Carol claims to talk to Lisa when she meditates, but I don’t believe in it. I’m at a different level. I know when Carol sees certain signs she believes in that. It’s important to her.”
Much like our wives, we are keyed in to seeing signs and keeping mementos.
Irv: “Jess and I had a song. One day, as I came to work, I was feeling really down and I pulled into my parking spot. Just before I cut the engine, I said, ‘Jessie, talk to me, tell me you’re okay.’ Just then our song came on. About a year later, I was driving on a rainy, miserable night and I was in a terrible funk. Once again, the exact same thing happened. There were only two times I called out for Jessie to talk to me, and both times the song came on. Another time, I went to the cemetery with Audrey. I had been reluctant to go, but as I stepped out of the car I found a pin on the ground with a
J
and an angel sitting on it.”
Bruce: “The butterfly is something a lot of grief groups hang on to. It’s fragile, beautiful, and has an extremely short life span. Everybody finds something they take as a signal that their child is there. We hear a certain song that we feel is Howie’s way of coming through to us and letting us know he’s around. I think everybody grabs at that.”
But others of us are more pragmatic. We can feel their presence without seeing direct signs.
Don: “I wouldn’t say there isn’t anything to signs. But I don’t think it’s our children talking to us. I think it’s more us looking for things. My wife is always
on the lookout for things to tie us to Lisa. She looks for butterflies. But butterflies fly past me all the time. They land on my shoulder on the golf course. That’s what butterflies do. Is that my daughter talking to me? I don’t think so. I think you have to want to believe in that.”
Tom: “I read once that death does not end a relationship, it changes it. I have a whole new relationship with Michael. I feel he’s with me and I’m never alone. We knew each other pretty well, Mike and I, and I really feel I still have a good relationship with him. He’s not far.”
Our wives seem to become more upset than we do about insensitive remarks made by unthinking outsiders. Surely we hear them, and we are taken aback momentarily by the stupidity of some of their comments, but we tend to more quickly dismiss them as well.
Bob:“‘Civilians’ think they can solve your problem or give advice because they assume problems have a beginning, a middle and an end. But grief never ends; it just changes. It’s always there. ‘Civilians’ think they can give you a solution when there is no solution.”
Mel: “They say they know how I feel. How do they know how I feel? You just dismiss it out of hand.”
Bruce: “Most of us have heard those worthless platitudes all our lives. One individual went on and on about his ninety-year-old mother who had died. Here I was just trying to get off the chair, having lost my twenty-one-year-old son, and he was carrying on and on. But part of me realized he had his sorrow and was totally within himself at that juncture. Mostly, people would ask me what happened to Howie and when I told them I didn’t know how he died, there wasn’t any place else for the conversation to go.”
Even with the passage of time, our worlds remain colorless. To the outsider, we appear to be no different than anyone else. But scratch the surface and grief is always there.