October 6, 2005. Rituals, routines and remembering.

October 6, 2005.  It was supposed to be a day that we celebrated every year for the rest of our lives, instead it is a day when grief floods my heart and reminds me of what should have been.  It has been six years since we have lost that little man, our first born child, our first true love.  It’s been six years and although my heart has healed a great deal since that horrible nightmare, this year has been a bit more challenging than the last few for obvious reasons:  another pregnancy loss, being pregnant yet again and being pregnant with a boy once more.  All this being considered, it was a mere two days ago when I realized that this anniversary was coming up.  I struggle with these anniversaries and dates, I have issues with specific rituals and routines, I don’t want to memorialize the bad days, I just want to hold onto the good.  But when your first child’s birthdate and death date are one in the same, it gets a little complicated. 

You see, six years ago, when my fate had been presented before me, I had to make decisions on how I was going to go forward.  I had to decide how this event was going to define me, who I was going to become, and what I was going to do so that I still had choices in a situation that was not my choice at all.  I had to decide how I was going to handle losing the only child I had ever known.  You are put in a situation in which you have to immediately begin making decisions on how you are going to handle your grief for the rest of your life.  And making these decisions is hard, it’s gut-wrenching, it exhausting, and at the same time you can’t believe you have to do this at all.  One of the biggest struggles that I have had in all of this was figuring out how I was going to remember my son.  Of course I knew I would always remember him, but our society, our culture is full of rituals and routines in which we honor and remember those that have gone before us in certain ways.  Funerals, burials, cemeteries, birthdays, anniversaries:  all things that help us in our grieving process, all things that are meant to mend our hearts and commemorate our loved ones.  And along with these events, dates seem to be the most important of all.  Continuing to honor birthdates of our loved ones, branding the death dates in our hearts of the ones that we have lost.  Immediately, I knew these things would be hard for me, I knew I would struggle with some of this stuff, rituals and routines haven’t always been my friend and I knew that I couldn’t rely on them this time either.  I grew up in the shadows of grief, this grief thing was not new to me.   I have a history with this grieving and its rituals that has left my heart a bit unsettled. There had to be another way. 

I feel like I have shared this story with you, although I’m not sure exactly when or in what context, so I feel I need to revisit it to some extent.  When I was 3 ½ years old, my younger brother died.  He was 15 months old.   It was a horrible accident.  Seriously unfathomable.  To this day, I still do not know how my parents survived it.  My experiences with grief started at a very young age.  Many people ask me if I remember.  I’m not sure how much I truly remember from that date, from that age, but what I do remember is how that grief affected those around me.  I watched grief take ahold of my family members, I watched grief grab onto the ones I loved and I watched how grief never really left at all.  And I hope you understand that I am not saying that anyone did anything wrong.  My family handled their grief to the best of their abilities.  We grieved like any normal family would have grieved.  My dad pushed down his feelings as far as they would go and my mom fought the demons of guilt as ferociously as she knew how.  My parents did an amazing job raising my brother and I, and I often wonder how they did such an incredible job considering all they had been through already, being such young parents and tackling such a horrible, horrible tragedy so early on in their parenting years.  Unfathomable. 

But something that I learned at a young age in watching those around me, was that these rituals that we engaged in to remember the dead weren’t always healing, sometimes they seemed to do more harm than good.  I watched my mom suffer.  As I grew up, I watched my mom strictly adhere to the ritual of visiting my brother’s grave every year on his birthday and on the date of his death.  I witnessed her suffering horrible bouts of guilt if there was a reason that she could not get there, whether it was the distance or the weather or a scheduling conflict of sorts.  I watched this guilt surface and take over her spirit and I saw how it penetrated the depths of her.  As a child, it hurt to lose my brother, it was painful, it was brutal.  But it hurt even more to see my own mother in the depths of her own pain.  I hurt when she hurt, and I hated this beast called grief and hated even more what its pal guilt did to my mom.  I’ve tried over the years as I have become an adult to rationalize with her that she does not have to do this to herself, that it doesn’t have to be this way, but to her it does.  This is what she decided long ago.  This is what she has needed to do to survive.  This was her way.

I had my own ritual as a child to help me work through my grief as well.  For as long as I could remember, I said a special prayer to my baby brother.  A prayer that I began saying with my mom every night and then continued to say on my own as I grew up.  I remember saying this prayer every night and I truly believe that it brought me peace at one time.  But as I grew older, this prayer became a burden of grief instead of a tool to heal it.  If I forgot to say this prayer, I felt guilty.  If I was tired and didn’t want to extend this prayer, I felt guilty.  If I even entertained the idea of omitting this prayer from my evening routine, I felt guilty.  And so after years and years of saying this same prayer to my baby brother every night, I realized that this prayer no longer served its original purpose and that somehow I had to free myself from the chains of this grief, of this guilt and cut ties with this routine once and for all.  I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I remember it was painful, it was torturous, but it was necessary.  I didn’t want to live my life in guilt.  I didn’t want to remember my brother this way.  And when I finally realized that he wouldn’t have wanted to be remembered this way, I realized I could once and for all release this ritual, this routine, this prayer and best of all, this guilt.  And the amazing thing was, I didn’t forget about him and I didn’t stop praying to him.  I just did it when I wanted to, when I needed to, when it was important to.  This was what I needed to do to survive.  This was my way. 

And as I lost my own child I began remembering all of these things again.  I remembered how it hurt to see my mom suffer and struggle with the guilt of grieving.  I remembered how a grieving ritual ended up doing me more harm than good.  I remembered all the things that I didn’t want to do, that I didn’t want to adhere to, that I didn’t want to become.  I knew that rituals and routines wouldn’t be my friend, I had too much history with this creature of grief.  The only problem was that in remembering all the things I didn’t want to do, I had no idea what it was I did want to do.  I knew who I didn’t want to be in grief, I just didn’t know who I should be in my grief.  And I still struggle with this.  It’s been a hard day.  There is guilt involved with grief no matter how you handle it.  I would feel guilty if I didn’t acknowledge this day, but I try not to let myself get all tangled up in and stuck on dates.  We went to the cemetery today, it’s a ritual important to Rob, but I don’t want to get caught up in feeling as if I have to do this every year.  I also feel guilty dragging my child into my grief.  I want her to know about our son, I want her to know he was a part of our family, but I don’t want to get her twisted up into the rituals and routines of grieving for someone that was never a part of her existence.  And I don’t want her to live in the shadows of my grief.   But I also don’t want to hide my grief from her.  I want her to know that it’s okay to express your feelings if you are sad.  It’s such a delicate balance with her and I question daily if I am making the right decisions.   In addition, I feel guilty imposing my issues with routines and rituals onto others, especially my husband.  It was just this year that I told him what I am writing today on these pages.  But I didn’t want to impose my history, my beliefs on him.  I knew he had to work through his grief his way, not my way.  He was doing what he needed to do to survive.

Sometimes I have a point, today I’m not sure I know what it is.  Except that grief is complicated.  There is no right way or wrong way, there is just your way.  And we all do the best we can in our grieving process.  It hurts, it sucks and it remains with you no matter what.  Remembering and commemorating is hard.  We all have to do what we think is best in order to survive the things that often seem impossible to overcome.  And we also have to be willing to change these things when they aren’t working for us anymore and I think this is what is often harder than the grief itself.  If you are grieving someone you have loved and have lost, my heart goes out to you.  Be patient with yourself and remember, there is no right way or wrong way, only your way.  If you are supporting someone who has recently loved and has lost, please be patient with your loved one and remember, there is no right way or wrong way, only his or her way.  I am still finding my way, I am still working on my path through grief, and although my heart has healed a great deal, the grief still finds me, the guilt still haunts me and I am still wrestling with how my grieving process can encourage peace more than pain.   But it is this peace that I seek, it is this peace that is most important, it is in finding this peace within your grieving process that truly brings about the most change and promotes the most healing of your incredibly broken heart.  So today, as I remember my son, as I remember my grief, as I remember this date, I will remember to begin a new ritual:   wishing for peace.   Peace in my heart and yours, today and always.