My Heart is broken and pierced on Valentine's Day

I would like to share my heart with you. I found this heart on Cape Cod. It is broken and pierced. It is smooth due to the waves that bombarded it for years. My heart resembles this one. My heart will forever be broken and pierced due to the loss of my lovely son David. My heart has softened with time like the rough stone. It has become smooth due to the storms and waves that have hit me relentlessly. It is softened by pain and sorrow. It is softened by tears.

I do not understand

I continue to hurt over the loss of David despite the passage of time.

Regarding my grief, my biggest dilemma is not understanding the magnitude of the grief despite my faith and all of God's promises. Why do I hurt so badly and on a daily basis? Why do I feel so lonely and so incomplete? Why do I tear daily? Why hasn't the pain subsided? I am accused of rebelling against God by some and that adds to my pain. I try to hide the pain. I try to pretend that everything is normal. I just don't know anymore.

Twelve Years Ago

Twelve years ago, my precious David left us.  My heart is broken and time could not soothe the tears or dry them. Being gone I have a more lively sense of his presence even though he is absent in the body. His spirit surrounds me and his love guides me. His beauty has become immortal to me and my love for him will never die.

Devastating loss

Seven months since David left us I wrote this: I woke up in tears and I am in tears now. I feel that someone is ripping my heart out. There is calm outside after the snow storm and yet my heart is raging. How can I learn to live without him when I spent the last 30 years with him? I got accustomed to his presence. His voice continues to ring in my ears. I hear him saying “mom” in his sweet usual way. I go over the incidents and experiences that we shared and long to have them back. I don’t want to lose him. I don’t want to say goodbye. It is too soon. He is too young. He died in his prime. It is the most awful thing that can happen to anyone. I wish that I did not have to experience such loss. I wish that the Lord would have spared me such pain. I wish that I could reverse things. I wish that this is nothing but an ugly dream. Then his absence reminds me that it is real. He is gone. He has vanished. He disappeared. It is the worst gash that was ever made into my side. It is so deep, it is so cruel, and it is incurable.  I think of the brevity of life and the quote from Job “A man cometh forth as a flower and is cut down”. So we come up, we prosper, we die as the flower.

I Weep

During this holiday season I am more emotional than ever and the loneliness and despair has resulted in the writing of this short article.

  

I weep not only for losing my son but for all the parents who lost their children. I weep when I think of his face, I weep for his empty place. I weep when I think of the cold ground that covers him. Is he really gone from me on earth? I question that and continue to weep.

I have cried and wrestled often in prayer. How could someone as precious, so dear to my heart vanish like vapor and disappear? Yet I say to myself no, no, he is still with me. And then I say to myself “where is my son?” Where is he hiding? I look for him everywhere, among the flowers and trees, around the empty streets, in the house and everywhere, yet he is not there.

Pleasant memories bring him back to me, and my eyes become blurry with tears, yet there is no glimpse of him. Loneliness fills my soul and I question his whereabouts and wonder how one so close to me in life could be so far away now. I am alone and my heart is broken and my longing for him is as strong as ever. I long for him by day and by night. I often wish that he would come back again and free me from all the intense pain. Just as the leaves fall and the flowers die, I think of my son who is gone.

My hopes and feelings are confused; my sick heart grieves and is full of anguish. Yet his going from this earth has given me serener thoughts and nearness to the sky, and has opened my heart and my eyes to see what is beautiful and has strengthened my faith and turned me around from what is temporal to what is eternal.

Thoughts About The Loss

I gave this article to my colleagues before returning to teach after a semester off. It might be something that some of you, who have recently lost a child, could use.

I wish that David had not died and I want him back so badly. He was very important to me. I hope that you will not be afraid to speak his name. If I cry when you talk about David, it isn’t because you have hurt me. David’s death is the cause of my tears. I will be grateful if you will allow me to talk about him and to share my grief. Grieving is the hardest job that I will ever do. It is exhausting. Grieving is not contagious. Please do not shy away from me. I need you now more than ever. I know that you think and pray for me often. Please let me know through a phone call, a note or a hug. I wish that you would not think that my grief will be over in six months. These first months are traumatic for me. I hope that you will understand that my grief will never be over. I will suffer the death of David until the day I die. I will never not remember him, ever. I am trying hard to recover, but you need to understand that I will never fully recover, and will always miss David and will always grieve that he is dead. I am not asking for pity. I just want you to let me grieve. I must hurt before I can heal. I struggle daily and might be doing OK, but I do not feel OK. Depression, anger, hopelessness and overwhelming sadness is what I am experiencing which are normal reactions to grief. David believed in hope. He often said to me “mom, hope is a good thing, it is the best of things, and good things never die.” I hope that you will understand when I might be quiet, withdrawn, and cranky or irritable. I was told to “take one day at a time”. I would be doing well if I can handle one hour at a time or one moment at a time. Grief has changed me. I am not the same person I was before I lost David, and I will never be that person again. I wish that you would understand my loss, my grief, my tears, my void, my loneliness, my pain. BUT I pray that you will never understand.

Diary Entry from November 1, 2004

David died in August 2003. 

November 1, 2004, another month without my honey. The sadness grows as time moves. I feel a bit better today so far. I am going to trust that God knows the beginning from the end and that he allowed this to happen. I do not know why and will never know why. My thoughts however do not match my feelings. I try to be strong and then I fail. How can I be strong when the love of my life is gone? How can I go on with the trivial daily chores that have no meaning? I can't stand it. I never realized how empty life could be. I put so much energy all my life to succeed and be successful for my family and I failed everything. I feel so humbled by all this. I am nobody. I am nothing. It is 10 pm and I am extremely sad. I long for David and want to hold him. I continually have tears in my eyes. I have fears that I will not remember some aspects of his life. This is why I am trying to write as much as I can. His face I have memorized as well as his gentleness and love. I miss him so terribly and there is deep hole in my heart and soul.

Thoughts While on a Cruise

This was written in January 2014 while on a cruise.

Now that we are at the end of our lives, I plan to live to the fullest taking advantage of each moment as time is fleeting. I do not plan to waste my life on myself but on helping others and doing what is best for most. I will continue to write about David and to promote his beautiful person and character. It is a goal of mine never to give up as many want me to especially since it has been 10 years. How can I forget my son? Time does not take away what is forever mine. He is a part of me. Our souls are connected.

As I look at the sky from the ship I feel him. He is in the clouds and the sunrise. He is in the sunset and beyond the horizon. He is everywhere I am as he is a part of my being. I long for a tangible and visible image of himself which I will forever hope for knowing full well that it will never be here on this earth.

Why did life deprive me of a beautiful treasure? Why did I have to lose him? Why? Why? Why? Should I accept what happened? I have tried but it is unacceptable. Losing my son is abnormal. It is the reversal of nature. It is absurd. It is wrong. The young should precede the old. The young is the future. The young is hope. The young is life.

 I keep reflecting over the same thoughts and the same ideas with no answers and no change. This loss is permanent. Nothing on earth can restore it. I often think of David and his beauty and he is always associated with tears. Why can’t I think of joy at the same time? I say to myself that I am happy at times but I am never whole. I actually do not live in fear and worry about much. Every day is a new adventure and beginning. I live in the realm of the unknown anticipating new delights that I have never experienced before. My son has enriched my life in a way beyond words. He has added meaning to everything that I do and say. I often look at people and wonder what they feel or what they are thinking or whether their lives have meaning especially while cruising.

Tears can Tell

Tears are not a sign of weakness.  Often when we cry in front of people they try to stop us. They seem to be uncomfortable with our tears. Maybe they think that are weak because we cry. I think that our tears are a tribute of our love. Our tears seem to cleanse our soul and connect us more with our children. Tears relieve the tension that has been building inside. If we don’t cry we would explode. Once we cry we feel better.

Tears are a gift from God. They speak more loudly than words of how deeply we feel about our loss. We should never be ashamed of our tears. Do not hide your tears especially when you have such deep sorrow.  I know that tears cannot give us back our lost treasure.

In heaven there are no tears. “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain…” Revelations 21:4

Thoughts and Feelings over the Loss

Thoughts and Feelings over the Loss

By Leila Koepp

I wrote this a year and two months after David died.

It is cold and cloudy. I did not have a good night. I woke up several times with David on my mind. I kept thinking that I am determined to keep him alive. In my heart he will thrive and thus death will be conquered that way. Death is awful and disgusting especially when a young person is taken away. I never looked at death so closely before. I took it for granted as the norm. When David died everything normal became abnormal. Chaos entered my life. The whole world changed. I changed and the people I know changed. They became elusive and strange. When I needed support they were not there for me.

 I am learning many hard lessons through this tragedy. It is the biggest and most devastating experience of my life. I feel so sick so many times. My guts especially have a continual anxious and butterfly feeling. It is so uncomfortable and so annoying. I do not know when I will return back to being me again. I do not know who I am now. I do not know what I want to be. I do not know if I want to be anything. At school students have been very supportive. They seem to care. They try to make me feel better. The depth of sorrow is with me in the classroom. It is with me wherever I go. A minor incident could set me off and I cry relentlessly. The tears will forever flow.  

When I garden, I remember how he used to help me pluck the weeds. My tears are falling now as I write these words. I can’t stand it anymore. I wish that things were different. I for some reason cannot accept what happened. I cannot live my life without David. I am experiencing gut wrenching pain at the moment. I don’t know how to escape this pain. I never realized how many people have suffered like this in the past. They survived. Are they ever as happy as before? I do not know. I cannot know. I will never know. I just have to wish my days away, till we meet again

 My emotions ebb and flow. One day I wake up fine and as the day progresses, my sorrow builds up and then I go crazy, yell, scream and cry my heart out. Other days I wake up in tears and cry before I can get anything done. Yesterday I was a mess. I cried all the way to school. Today I saw a small jet going up and up into the sky so far that it could reach the crescent moon that was still visible in the daytime. I longed to be on that jet and imagined myself going up to see David. I never realized how deep the bond is between us. I keep questioning the loss and why God allowed David to leave us so young. Yet at the same time I do not understand why God takes other young people who would have impacted the world in a great positive way as well. “Every man dies” keeps ringing in my ears. I cannot forget that God is faithful even though my anger blinds me at times. A student left me a sweet note after the final “I am deeply sorry for your loss; I can only imagine what you are going through. Just know that he is with God, a better place”. That caused the tears to flow again. Tears for David will never dry.