Grief does not change anything

My advice to you is to realize that grief does not change anything. Grieving we must as love and grief are connected. It is OK to embrace life again and to go on living a fuller life that touches others and transforms their lives.

Grief is Individual and Private

The world is oblivious to my pain. No one can see inside of me. No one can experience what I am experiencing. No one can understand my pain.  It is unique for each person. Throughout the ages people are born and people die and life goes on, yet my life is altered. It is as if death caused a mutation in my soul. This has led to altered thinking and altered living. I see the brevity and vanity of life more clearly. Yet it is only one life and it is for a short period of time. The eternal is what I seek after now. Our days are numbered. Whatever they are has been determined from the beginning. It is so easy to philosophize and give advice when the person giving advice has no clue about the experience. That person cannot relate to the loss. We struggle and work hard to build a future and yet the ultimate future is transient. Death awaits each one of us. So why do we make such a big deal out of everything? I just need to smell the flowers and thank God for all the blessings that I still have. Sometimes I fear that I am going to lose what is left. There are no more guarantees.

More Diary Notes

This was written in my early days of grief in 2004

I am really despondent today and have some anger. I can’t imagine living like this till the day I die. It has been such a struggle and challenge. I am tired of pretending and philosophizing. It does not work. It is telling me that I can make it if I think this way or think of the eternal when everything that surrounds me is temporal and I live in a tangible world and I have to think of the unseen. I am really all confused and full of doubt. Faith is based on the unseen. It is so easy for someone who has not suffered such a loss to judge my faith and it has been judged many a time. Only the Lord knows my heart and knows how much I am hurting. I feel like a knife is cutting my heart out at times. Today is no good. The world around me is full of life and yet I feel dead on the inside. I want David to see the flowers that I am seeing and I want him to participate in this life. I am so void. I am so empty and so lonely and so messed up at this moment. This is not the way one must live. I am so stupid to deprive myself of the joy of this life knowing full well that there is nothing that I can do to change the unchangeable and yet I continue to feel sad. I really cannot change how I feel in an instant. It is not magic. It is a process of accepting and not accepting what happened until it sinks into my brain that life could be good again. Maybe someday I will feel like myself again. Yet I know that my grief will never be lost.

Sorrow Walks Beside Me

The article "Sorrow Walks Beside Me" is in my book "Topics in Grief. This note was sent to me by a woman who lost her son.

I just LOVE your article about sorrow walks beside me. I like to write but I am not a good writer. However, I do write a lot to release my pain. I did write some time ago " pain is my shadow" and I felt like you are so similar to me on how we grieve our children. People grieve in many many different ways. I guess mothers are alike in many loving ways. 

Diary Notes November 2003

    When David Died I started a diary. This is an entry in that diary that describes the devastation.

  November 3, 2003. I feel the grief every moment. I try to keep busy just to let the moments go by. I have become acquainted with grief. I concluded that no one can feel the pain that someone is going through unless they have experienced a similar loss and even then the feelings are going to be different. These feelings will depend on the relationship that the loved one had with the bereaved. The closer the relationship, the greater is the pain. I am struggling between the human and the spiritual. As a human, I think of all the things that David missed out on and my heart breaks. I anguish when I see young people. I anguish when the day is beautiful. I anguish when I eat something that David loved. I anguish all the time. When I think spiritually, I realize that all we have is time. Time will pass on and we all will be gone some day. Yet time is so precious. God gave us this life to enjoy. He blessed us with so many good things. David lost all this. My heart aches. I know that all that I am writing is not organized. Maybe it will make sense someday when it is put together. David was a special boy. He is the sensitive kind, the kind of boy that gets hurt easily. He also was a dreamer. He wanted to become so many things. He wanted to be a basketball player at one time. He tried acting. He tried computing, carpentry, and pizza. Yet when he did something he was very good at it. He loved the arts and nature. I am going to miss his presence at family gatherings. In a way I believe that part of the loss is due to the fact that we did not have a real extended family. His dad taught him how to fish and he did spend time with him. I am tired from grieving. I feel wasted. I still cannot comprehend the massive loss. As I think about it I become desperate. I do not get comfort as the days go by. I still feel sick as the image of his face is implanted in my memory. When I went upstairs to go to bed, all of a sudden, I started crying and could not quit. I basically threw a fit and wanted to die. I finally went to sleep.