Order New Book
Follow Me On
Archive for June, 2010
Nightmares Have Taken the Place of Dreams
I couldn’t stop reading this one. I received it from a grieving dad that lost his son to suicide over two years ago. His words are haunting and captures the impacts childloss can have on a father.
Sunlight comes through the small window of an old camper shell that I now live beneath. It sits on a pickup bed trailer I bought from a friend. The sunlight wakes me. I am filled with a dread that sits in the pit of my stomach, but I am used to it. The dread comes from knowing as I wake that the boy who filled my time, my heart, and my soul is no longer living on this earth, that he died a couple of years ago and I will never see him again. I look outside at the snow-covered landscape and wonder what today will bring. I am only curious, I do not really care. It is very cold outside but I have a lot of blankets and I am warm inside the shell. As I lie here thinking of all that is lost I begin to feel the morning tears starting. I am used to this also. I cry every morning and have for the last two years. Every morning I remember him. I remember all the days of his life, his smile, his laughter. I remember him dying right in front of me. I remember everything. No amount of denial will take these dark memories away. They have come to haunt me everyday since he left. I am homeless now for it has become impossible for me to re-enter the “world”.
Two years ago I lived on a small horse ranch in Colorado where I raised my son Taylor. I had a small but successful construction business and life was good. I was not in debt. Though my son was on his own, living with his girlfriend and young daughter, we saw each other often and played music together. The future lay sprawled in front of us beckoning us toward more life and experiences. We were very close. I had raised him alone since he was five or so. We were one thing. When he was a teenager he used to say that our life was like one big party. I agreed, for those years were the most filled with love and learning and fun. We lived a good clean life filled with a million possibilities…but not this one.
On a beautiful warm autumn day in September 2007, after a terrible argument with his girlfriend, he took his young life. This is as plain and simple as I can put it for now though the story is much more complicated. Since that day I have traversed a long sad road and I have sunk very low. Nightmares have taken the place of dreams. My mind (no longer my own) makes things up as it goes along, making questionable decisions and failing in its quest for sanity. The world has changed. I cannot for the life of me make it glitter again. Life is as dead as I am. I have forgotten my life, and my old life has forgotten me. For this I am glad for I have nothing to say anymore.
I miss him. God I miss him so much. I find myself talking to him as if he were still here. If someone saw me they would think me insanely lost. Perhaps I am, but what the matter? There is no rush to anywhere. Everything is trivial and small. Everything is very, very still. The wind looks crooked and rough where once it was smooth and fierce and straight. Somehow his loss sucked the very life out of the world and left it desolate and shapeless. I was not done telling him stories. I wasn’t done watching him grow up. I wasn’t done learning from him for he taught me courage and sacrifice for it seemed to me that he was always paying a debt he didn’t owe. I miss his face. I miss his smile. I miss his tender heart and fierce determination.
Spring will come soon. I can tell because the ice looks different and I can’t explain that. It is letting go to the sun and I am not ready for it. I am not ready for the light and song of birds signaling that life is starting again. I am so tired and no amount of hugs or love can comfort me in this darkness for the lowest places have found me. I am forever lost in the shock of it and cannot find any place that looks the way it used to. This place is all wrong now. I cannot fit myself to it nor get anything to work like it used to. The world has become trivial and all the people in it are ghosts.
Can this be more than grief? Grief. Such a small word. It is an insult to the thing it describes. I am told that I have a grief disorder. A label for me. I think that’s accurate. I have a disordered reaction to a disordered event. And how was I supposed to react? Oh I lost my son…I’ll get another one. Notice I did not say feel? Doctors are not interested in your feelings, they are interested in your reactions. They don’t care that you are hurt deeply, as long as you “react” correctly.
Maybe people do “move on” shortly after the death of a loved one. They go back to work, to parties, to achievement, to loving again. But out there in the real world, where most people never look, there is a sea of bereaved parents that are not moving on, or coming around. For me, nothing has changed. The pain remains embedded in my chest. I am sure that this will always be what I am left with.
I was a father. I was Taylor’s father. No matter what anyone tells me, I failed him. I failed to protect him. I failed to save him. I was taught that this is what a man does, he protects his family.
I have all kinds of memories. The bad ones I do my best to choke down and bury in forgetfulness but there is no forgetting. They come uninvited and leave when they want. They show up in the sad nightmares that haunt my deepest being. The saving grace in all this is that I love him with all of my heart. In the aftermath of his passing, that part never changed.
Submitted to GrievingDads.com Project by Jody Dark Eagle Breedlove. Jody lives in a rural area in southern Colorado.
The Aftermath: I Cremated My Mother and Buried My Daughter (Part 3)
The following is “Part 3″ of a 3 part series I received from a grieving dads that faced the loss of his mom and daughter over a two-week time frame. This one is appropriately called “The Aftermath” due to his attempt to get back to “normal”.
In about a month-and-a-half, I cremated my mother and buried my daughter. My life will certainly never be the same. Things that once seemed so important couldn’t be more trivial to me. All my other problems seem very small next to what my family has gone through. For a while, I turned all my attention to supporting my wife. Once she seemed to be getting significantly better, I turned inward and have gone through a great bout of depression. I am starting to come out of it, but I am still always either very sad or on the edge of going off on whoever says just the wrong thing to me. I find I am productive at work, but I don’t care about it. I maintain a semblance of productivity to support my family. I’ve never been a workaholic, but now it all seems that work is very trivial to me. I have a lot of anger for the person I have chosen to blame for the death of our daughter, though it may be misdirected. I’ll probably never tell her anyway, so I don’t suppose any harm is done as long as I can also get past it somehow, someday. Mostly, I am just sad and miss my mother who I knew very well and my daughter who I never got to know, but love just as much as if she were here with me.
We have begun the process of healing, but I have come to realize that waiting for things to get back to normal is futile. Things will never be “normal” again.
Fourth Anniversary of the Death of My Sweet Baby Boy
This posting is a writing from me (a grieving dad) and not from one of the grieving dads that reach out to me. I wrote this one for me and my son Noah. I released a lot of tears writing this brief posting; mainly from the reality that sits in from time to time. I hope it sheds some light on some of the things that bereaved parents go through after the loss of a child.
The four-year anniversary of the death of my sweet baby boy Noah is tomorrow. I really don’t know how to handle the day. He officially died on June 7th and was born on June 8th. We try to make it a special day for baby Noah with a balloon release and a birthday cake. I know it’s kind of fucked up, trying to do “normal” things on a day that isn’t normal. I really don’t know what else to do. I just want him to know that I miss him dearly and that I haven’t forgotten about him, so we sing him Happy Birthday and blow out the candles in hopes that he is watching and understands how much we love him and miss him.
Although he wasn’t alive when he was born, the time I spent with him was awesome. He was so tiny he didn’t even fit into the preemie outfit we had bought him in anticipation of this death. We spent 6 hours with him before the nurse had taken him away. Those 6 hours were the worst and best time of my life. I knew he wouldn’t be coming home with me, like most parents are fortunate enough to experience, but that didn’t stop me from being a proud father. He was so beautiful.
We are fortunate enough to have his hand prints, photos, his outfit and the blanket the nurses had wrapped him in, but it will never be enough. The hole in my heart will not be filled until I am holding him and my daughter Katie in my arms again.
It took me a couple of years to be able to function in somewhat of a normal way again. The grief and sadness of losing Katie and Noah has taken a major toll on me mentally.
The next couple of days will come and go and most of our family (and certainly friends) won’t remember to call or check in with us. There will be excuses like “I didn’t want to remind you or bring you down”. What they are really saying is “I forgot” or “I didn’t have the courage to actually have a heart to heart conversation with you about the death of your child”. Most people don’t like the felling of being “uncomfortable”. However, the parents that have lost a child must live with that “uncomfortable” feeling every day. It’s a reality in which we live.
If it weren’t for some dear friends that have also experienced a loss of a child, we wouldn’t hear from anyone on Noah’s birthday. The cards and gifts that we receive from these friends are truly heartfelt because they understand what its like to be alone in your thoughts on these difficult days.
In closing I want to wish by beautiful son Noah, Happy Birthday! You will always be with me and I will always miss you. I look forward to the day that I will get to hold you in my arms again. Please know and remember that your daddy loves you so very deeply.
I Cremated My Mother and Buried My Daughter (Part 2)
The following is Part 2 of the 3 Part story I received from a grieving dad that lost his mom and daughter over a 2 week period. I must admit this part of the story was very difficult for me to read and it triggered some tears. It is very similar to my experiences during loss of my two children. It is kind of graphic, but I think its important to understand the trauma that people experience during such an event. Many peole expereince this but never have the opportunity to express how they feel since a lot of people feel uncomfortable hearing such a story.
A few days after I cremated my mom, my wife’s bleeding started. She was now about 22 weeks along in the pregnancy. She talked with the doctor and we went to the ER. The doctor put Mary on bed rest and observation. Once the bleeding slowed and seemed to stabilize, we felt a little more at ease, but started to dread the possibility of up to four months of bed rest in the hospital. Since I was already off work for the week, my days consisted of getting up, taking my son to daycare, driving 45+ minutes to the hospital to spend the day with my wife, leaving around 4 p.m. to drive 45+ minutes to have drive thru dinner and get my son and head back to the hospital so my wife could spend some time with him, and then driving back home at night. I usually was able to sneak a shower in there somewhere each day. I was putting about 120 miles a day on the truck and, especially after the loss of my mom, began to feel I was wearing very thin – I was so selfish. So, since my wife’s bleeding was almost stopped by the end of the week, I started pressuring her and the doctor to get her home so my life would be easier and I could have much more time with her and my son. I just didn’t think I could handle that for four months, but now wish I had because we would probably have my daughter today if it were not for my selfish pressuring of my wife and her doctor.
We got home about noon and I had to turn around at about 5 p.m. and go back to the ER with my son since he had a high fever that neither Tylenol nor Motrin would touch. He had pneumonia, which was extra unsettling at the time since mom had just died of complications from pneumonia/H1N1.
The next day I ordered a Doppler fetal heart rate monitor so we could listen to my daughter’s heart. That night my wife passed a large clot and we called the doctor. The doctor asked a few questions and said she did not need to come in to the ER. I had ordered the monitor with overnight shipping, and we got it and used it to listen to my daughter’s heart. That night my wife’s water broke. By the time we got into the triage room in the maternity ward, there was no heartbeat and no movement. My daughter had died in utero two weeks to the day after my mom.
My wife had been having regular contractions since we had left home for the hospital, so she was contracting for about four hours. Just after midnight, I was alone in the room with my wife when she said she felt like she needed to go to the bathroom. So, I helped her to the bathroom and waited outside the door in case she needed me. Fairly soon, she groaned, and then said, “Something came out of me.” I stepped in immediately and could see the fear of the indignity that she had just delivered our baby, so I held my wife with one arm and pulled the emergency cord with the other. Two nurses actually ran into the room closely followed by a third. They got their gloves on, retrieved my daughter and took her and my wife to the bed still connected. This all happened so quickly.
My daughter died in utero and was delivered on January 13th, 2010. She was 11 ½ inches long and 1 lb. 2 oz. One of the nurses cut the cord and took her away to clean her up and dress her so that we could see her, hold her, and spend some time with her before taking her away. The nurse that dressed her also made clay imprints of her hands and feet, made ink footprints, and took a few pictures of her for us before we saw her and while we were holding her. While the nurse was working on my daughter for us, I left the room and called our former priest. He gave me explicit instructions on how to baptize my daughter and said he would come see us immediately. I went into the side room off the maternity room where they store the baby warmer and where the nurse was still working on dressing her. I asked the nurse for something to put some water in and she gave me a clam shell. I put some water in the shell and poured the first water saying, “I baptize you in the name of the Father,” poured more water saying, “and the name of the Son,” and pouring again saying, “and the name of the Holy Spirit.” Then, I dipped my finger in the remaining water and put a cross on her head, blessing her in the same way. Because of her appearance, I expected her skin to feel dry and scaly, but it was soft as a baby’s skin should be. Then I left to let the nurse finish preparing her.
Soon after, the nurse brought her in to us wrapped in a pink blanket dressed in a small white gown and bonnet. My wife held her held her and looked at her for a while, trying to etch our daughter into her memory. Later, my wife offered our daughter to me and I held her for a while as well-doing the same. We both touched her little hands and face and told her how sorry we were that we were not going to be able to be with her and raise her and hear her laugh and cry. At some point while we were with her, our priest came in and baptized her again (just to be sure). Later, we let the nurse take our daughter, and eventually we were moved a recovery room, still in the maternity ward on the side with the new mothers. We finally got to bed about 4 a.m. Later that morning we had some visitors and our friends brought our son back to us around 11 a.m. Most of that day is really a blur to me because of the hours we kept and the extreme devastation. That afternoon, we wanted to see our daughter one last time, and one of the nurses went and got her for us so we could hold her one more time before we left. Both of us still wish we had spent more time with her.
Our hospital offered an option to have our daughter buried with several other babies who had died in utero during the last quarter in a place called the Garden of Angels at no charge, and we thought that, since she wouldn’t be alone, that would be a nice option. However, we also wanted to have a service of our own for ourselves and our family, so we called our priest. We had a full Catholic funeral for her on January 28th. She was buried on the 29th. We also went to the multi-family service at the Garden of Angels where she is buried on February 13th, 2010.