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“It’s Tough” by Kelly Farley

“It’s Tough”

People come from many backgrounds and perspectives that we often do not understand.  I recently had an experience where one person’s perspective was different than mine.  It occurred at my office with a guy I don’t generally work with.  We were both in the washroom making small talk while we washed our hands.  The subject of him being exhausted came up and I told him he should try to get some more sleep.  Then he said “I would love to get a full night’s sleep but my daughter has been waking me up in the middle of the night, it’s tough.”  He was referring to his new baby girl that was 4-5 months old.  These types of comments use to really upset me, but not so much anymore, but for some he must have caught me on a bad day because his comment really pissed me off.  I wanted to respond with, “You think getting up in the middle of the night to care for your healthy daughter is tough, try burying two children.  I don’t even want to fucking hear it!”

I didn’t respond that way because I knew it wouldn’t be fair to him, he has no clue what it’s like to bury a child.  Nor do I want him to find out.  If you have not experienced the death of a child, you could not possibly understand how tough it is.  If you have, you know how deep this pain goes into your body.  There really are no words that can explain how much it impacts you in every single part of your life.

Have any of you experienced similar situations where people have said stupid shit and they have no clue they even said it?

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Farley-Kluger Initiative to Amend the FMLA (Childloss)

 Parental Bereavement Leave
(The Farley-Kluger Initiative to Amend the FMLA)

My “co-sponser” for the Farley-Kluger Initiative was on C-SPAN today for an interview regarding our efforts to add the death of a child as one of the qualifyers for 12 weeks of unpaid time that is allowed by FMLA.

You can view the video by clicking on the link below or copying and pasting it into your browser:
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/JBa

The Farley-Kluger Initiative is proud to have the support of such organizations as Parents of Murdered Children (POMC), The M.I.S.S. Foundation, Share Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support, Inc., The JED Foundation, Blue Star Families, Gold Star Mothers and Fathers, The Children’s Bereavement Center of Miami, American Academy of Grief Counseling and The American Institute for Health Care Professionals, to name a few.

You can sign the petition here:  www.FarleyKluger.com

 

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“Home Sick” by Kelly Farley

“Home Sick”

All of us that have lost a child can agree that when you lose a child, everything in your life becomes impacted in some way.  After the death of my son Noah, and once I surrendered to the fight of emotional avoidance, I became someone who didn’t like to leave the house and became somewhat antisocial for the first time in my life.  I felt a lot of comfort hanging out at home with my wife Christine.  When she would leave the house and I was left by myself, I would get this uneasy feeling.  I was almost afraid to be left alone by myself.  Not sure why and even though we were both fighting a similar battle, just being with Christine kept me calm.

I didn’t even like to leave my house to go to work.  Most of this was driven by fear of being out in public and not being able to control my emotions, but I also really didn’t see the point in working anymore.  I started to question all of the things I use to just “do” as part of what is expected by society.  Just like most people, I would get up, go to work, come home and spend an hour or two with my wife and do it all again the next day until I made it to the weekend.  However, after the death of Katie and Noah, I really started to question the whole purpose of the life I was living and why many of us put so much emphasis on material things that do not matter.  It’s the material things that keep us working at stressful careers/jobs that many of us don’t really like or do not find rewarding.  I learned the hard way that these “things” only provide temporary happiness until we find something else that holds our attention.

This change in thinking along with the fact I didn’t want to leave my house motivated me to go part-time in my job for a couple of years.  I was only 37 at the time and an associate in an engineering firm with a promising career on the corporate ladder.  I knew going part time would impact all of what I worked for but it was the best decision I could have made for my own mental health, not to mention kissing ass to climb the corporate ladder was never part of who I am as a person.  I have found that the death of a child has made the tolerable things in my life less tolerable.  This way of thinking is very liberating once you find a way to let go and change the way your think and live your life.

Getting to this point took me a lot of time and a lot of processing.  I found that reducing my hours and working 25-30 hours a week was still a difficult task for me.  I would wake every morning with anxiety about getting up and going to work.  The anxiety was triggered by the fact I knew I wasn’t performing at my job like I use to and I was worried they would find out and let me go.  I really didn’t want to leave the house.  I would get up after sleeping 10 hours, go to work, rush home, change into my running pants and tee shirt and sit in my chair and read books about grief.  I was trying to understand what I was dealing with; I wanted to know my enemy and what I could expect.  There were a lot of books that spoke of grief, but not many written by dads that discussed the really dark stuff that I was dealing with.  I felt alone which made me want to stay isolated even more because I thought I was weak and I was afraid others would find out.

After a couple of years, the anxiety lifted and I have returned to work full time.  I do not rush home like I use to during the dark days of grief, but one thing has stayed with me.  It is no where as strong as it use to be, but I still have times where if I am away from home for more than a couple of days, I get a sense of sadness that comes over me.  There is a sense of peace that I find when I am in my own home with Christine and my dog Buddy.  This feeling of being home sick and wanting to be at home came over me last week while on vacation with Christine.  We were in the beautiful islands of Turks and Caicos for our 15 year wedding anniversary celebration.  Like I said earlier, the feeling isn’t as intense as it use to be and it doesn’t happen as often but I still get the home sick feeling from time to time.  About 3 days into our 5 day vacation, out of the blue I started the get that feeling of wanting to be at home, which triggered a little anxiety.  I just needed the comforts of home and I knew it wasn’t going to be feasible to just take off and head for home after three days.

All of us that have lost a child will always carry the pain of losing a child, but we also deal with the fallout of the emotional impacts we experienced.  The trauma of losing a child does permanent damage to our nervous system and changes the way we see the world.  Some of the changes are positive, but some are not.  Each bereaved parent has a different experience and it takes time to fully comprehend the impact.  As we try to pick up the pieces and put them back where they were, we realize these pieces have changed shapes or are still missing which makes it impossible to be “put back together” as the person we were before.  We learn to adapt the best way we can and continue to learn about the new person we have become.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

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“Honored” by Kelly Farley

Honored

Before the deaths of my children I was never the person to have a life mission of helping other people.  I never really thought about it, I guess you could say I was selfish from that standpoint.  If someone needed help and asked, I was there for them, but I never went out of my way to seek out people in need.

The one thing that the death of Katie and Noah taught me was that there are a lot of hurting people in this world.  Most of them you will never know because they keep it to themselves as a way to not burden others.  I was that person for a while until I needed help beyond what I could provide myself.  Once I opened my mind and set aside my pride, I allowed others to help me.  Strangers I had never met before were the first ones there when I needed someone to pick me up at that moment.  If it was not for these people, I would have never survived on my own.  I decided to make it my mission to help others when I could, especially when it comes to the death of a child.

I got the idea to write my book Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back as a result of a 10 minute conversation I had with a guy I hired to do some temporary work for me back in late 2009.  Come to find out, the guy needed me to drop him off at the bus stop.  After further discussion, he shared with me that he lived at the local homeless shelter.  I was a little surprised by this since I just so happened to be going there the following month with a men’s group that I joined after losing Katie and Noah.  I shared with him this fact and he looked at me and said “I lost my son in 1991”.  It was about this time I arrived at his bus stop and he needed to go to catch his bus, but his statement took me by surprise.  His comments stayed with me for about two weeks as I kept wondering if this guy ended up homeless as a result of losing his son.  I wondered this because I know what it feels like to be in the depths of despair after losing a child and I could see how one could end up in this situation if he didn’t have the support around him to help him.  I decided if this was the case, it’s unacceptable and I was going to do something to help others.  It took me a few more months to make the decision to start the www.GrievingDads.com blog and start writing a book for help grieving dads (and moms).

The decision to write the book and start the blog has had major impacts on my life.  I hear from people almost daily that thank me for creating both of them.  I have heard statements like “its people like you that help me live another day” and “your blog helps me survive”.  I don’t take these statements lightly, in fact, I am honored that I am able to make that kind of impact in others lives.  I have no doubt that the Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back book will help 10’s of thousands of people around the world.

I say these things because this last week I had a really surreal experience.  I had the kind of experience that gives you goose bumps.  To give you a little background, about four weeks ago I scheduled a physical with a new doctor since my doctor of 15 years decided to pack up and move to Oregon from Chicago.  When I went to this new doctor’s office, the nurse took me into the room and took my blood pressure and other vitals.  As we were talking, I told her I was working on my book over the weekend so I can have it wrapped up by end of April.  She asked me what type of book it was and I gave her an overview.  She said she lost a sister and her mom has always struggled with it and her grandfather lost his son and never talked about it, but has seen the impact it has had on her family.  I gave her my business card that has my blog information and told her to give it to her mom and grandfather.  This was the last of our conversation.

This past Thursday I started to come down with a cold which kind of pissed me off since I was trying to stay healthy before I leave for a much needed vacation next week.  Since I typically get sinus infections when I get a cold, I decided to head to the doctor on Friday to get on antibiotics before my trip.  When I arrived, the same nurse came into the waiting room and asked me to follow her.  When we got into the room she turned to me and said “I can’t believe you are here”.  I responded with “Do you remember me?” thinking she sees patients all day long and I was new to the office.  She said “I absolutely know who you are; I have been praying that I see you again.”  This kind of freaked me out a little, but I responded with “is everything ok”.  She said “No, my boyfriend’s 16 year old daughter was killed by a hit and run driver two weeks ago.  When it happened I immediately thought of you, but I lost the card you gave me.  I have been praying I would see you again and here you are”.  This is when the goose bumps happened.  We spent about 20 minutes talking and before I left, I wrote down all my contact information for her and her boyfriend.  She then gave me a big hug and thanked me.

I don’t know if I am the right person for all of the work I have been doing, but I will continue to take on this responsibility.  I am truly honored by all of you who write to thank me and find some sort of comfort, peace or insight into what I often blog about.  I am honored that 100’s of grieving dads shared their stories with me in order to create this valuable and much needed resource.  I am honored to be on this same path with all of you.  I would change it if I could, but that’s not an option, so we’ll continue to walk together.  People ahead of me reached out a hand to pull me along and I must say I am honored to reach back and pull others along with me.

Peace. 

Kelly Farley

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