Grief's Beginning, Middle, and...New Growth? Part Two
Dumb decisions: the gift that keeps on giving
Before jumping into this newsletter, you’ll probably want to catch up on the last edition for context if you haven’t seen yet.
Last week, I was talking with you about the first of many dumb decisions I made early on in my grief. I’ve pummeled myself for a while but have also learned that this kind of regret is common, so if you’re beating yourself up about choices you made in those first few days and weeks, don’t. You are far from alone.
We left off at the point where I was explaining how I ended up flying to and attending Christopher’s funeral on my own after insisting my husband stay behind to keep a long-standing commitment, so we’ll pick up from there.
As I mentioned, neither of us were thinking clearly as we tried to muddle through those early days. I was afraid to inconvenience anyone by asking Michael to break a long-standing commitment involving a whole lot of people and go with me, and he was too deep in his own grief to argue with me. We were both on autopilot, too upset to realize the absurdity of that choice or its implications – an emotionally expensive oversight, then and even now.
The nightmare of my son’s death collided with the awfulness of returning to where we’d been living when I made the decision to leave my then-husband, my children’ father. I’d taken my kids to Florida (with his consent) while he and the accompanying gossip stayed in the area, so I was well aware I was persona non grata within 100 miles of this town. An hour or so into the visitation, I began to realize people had the wrong idea about why my husband wasn’t with me.
As the day unfolded and voiced carried, Michael’s absence was turning into the narrative that, “Lisa’s husband didn’t care enough to attend the funeral” and “Lisa’s marriage is clearly on the rocks or he’d be here.” People could have accused me of orchestrating the fall of the Roman empire and I wouldn’t have given a shit, but when one of my sons picked up on the gossip, I knew I’d made the wrong choice to ask Michael to stay behind.
In the end, it was all for naught. Michael had pulled himself together enough to keep his commitment to a very public-facing event that required him to pretend absolutely nothing was wrong less than 24 hours after his stepson died, and for several days after. Yet this group that was happy to avail themselves of his effort so they didn’t have to scramble for a fix or cancel, barely acknowledged it and couldn’t even be arsed to drop in on the gathering we had in our home a couple weeks later. It was 100 percent our choice for him to stay behind but, in retrospect, the pain it caused both of us wasn’t worth it since the recipients of his efforts didn’t seem to care anyway.
This is the biggest reason I regret the first two – the worst two – decisions I made in the earliest days of my grief. I made a conscious choice to keep Michael in the dark the night I found out Christopher died and to attend the funeral without him to (stupidly) make life easier for everyone but the two of us. In the end, it made things exponentially worse because I’ll never get those moments back. I can’t rewind that awful Friday night I spent alone on the living room floor screaming into pillows until I had no voice left. There’s no funeral do-over to keep people from speculating why he wasn’t there.
I was privately outraged for my husband and crushed at the behavior of people I had previously respected, but the bitterness I felt for a long time has subsided. But with the help of my grief counselor, I’ve flipped the script on the first decision – to not ask Michael to come home when I got the news – and now consider it an important reference point when I think I can’t stand one more day on this earth without my son. In those moments, I remind myself that whatever I’m feeling in the moment is nothing compared to hearing the words “Christopher killed himself” crackle across the phone line. If I lived through that, I can live through almost any other disappointment life throws at me.
As for the second decision, asking Michael to stay behind while I went to the funeral, well… my heart was in the right place. I’ll always regret Michael wasn’t there, not because I care about the gossip surrounding his absence, but because Christopher was his son, too. As for the other people involved in the project he stayed for, I've filed the whole situation under, “when people show you who they are, believe them.”
I carry those two thoughts with me as I navigate my middle grief and will take them with me into whatever new growth lies ahead. I often say these days that I have to simply accept the past because I can’t change it. Believe me, even if I could, those two decisions aren’t what I’d change. I’d change never needing to make them in the first place.
News & Notes
6 Common Misconceptions About Grief
“I accepted my grief long before I dealt with my anger. (That anger hit just about at the three year mark and it was a rage like none I’ve never felt before.) Because grief isn’t linear. It’s a roller coaster that doubles back on itself and plummets and takes a sharp right and then a sharp left, all while you thought you were nearing the end of the ride.”
This is why I think the “five stages of grief” philosophy is garbage, at least as it applies to losing a child. Vilomah grief isn’t like labor, you don’t transition from one phase to the next. Unfortunately, too many people expect us to be as predictable as that ideology suggests and blame us when we aren’t “over it already.”
“Scientists discover fetal cells in the darnedest places. Our children colonize our lungs, spleens, kidneys, thyroids, skin. Their cells embed in our bone marrow and breasts. Often they stay forever. Scientists find rogue fetal cells while autopsying the cadavers of old women, whose babies are now middle-aged.”
Do not ever tell me that a mother’s grief over losing their child is the same as anyone else’s. I don’t mean it’s more profound or important than a father, sibling, or other family member’s grief. It’s just different. Maybe this is why.
Author Whose Son Died 14 Years Ago has Words of Hope
“I promise this will not always be the first thing you think about in the morning. I promise you won’t always lie awake at night, sobbing until you can’t breathe.”
This was originally a threaded twitter post, which you can find here.
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Until next week,
Be well.
Lisa