On a Night in December

In the midst of winter
and all the trees turned bare,
we were faced with shopping malls
where carols filled the air.

And thoughts all turned to loved ones,
those present, and those not.
For us, whose lives were drained of light,
it was solace that we sought.

And so began a journey
of candles round the earth
bringing light to darkness
and honoring the worth

of children held so dear to us
but never to grow old,
whose lives filled ours like tapestries,
their threads the finest gold.

Now we gather on this night
and watch the candles burn
see their pictures, say their names
one by one, in turn.

And our children, brothers, sisters,
for whom we gather here,
let us know, in the candles glow,
that they are always near.

Their light will e’er surround us;
their love will always flow.
As we leave may we remember,
that this is ever so.

Genesse Bourdeau Gentry 2011

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Much of that time is now a blur, too painful to remember.  But I do recall clearly my feeling of disconnection from most of the world of the living. My life had been ruined and I had no idea what to do. The friends with whom I’d surrounded myself before Lori’s death had no way of knowing how to befriend me in this, and I had no idea how to ask for the help I needed. So onto my overwhelming grief was added hurt and loneliness because friends who didn’t know what to do or say often opted to do and say nothing.

Then my husband and I found the monthly meetings of The Compassionate Friends (TCF) a support group for families who have experienced the death of a child. I won’t say it was immediately a perfect fit for me, because it wasn’t, or that I felt comfortable at the meetings, because I didn’t. I was a very private person; I had had no experience crying on anyone’s shoulder. My tears had always been in solitude. I’d never learned to express my feelings in words.

So when someone asked me how I was feeling, I’d almost panic. How DID I feel? And after listening to the others in the circle, by the time my turn came, I was often overwhelmed with feelings. Like many others, I can’t cry and talk at the same time, which caused people to have to wait as I tried to get the words out . . . I hated all the eyes on me while I tried to gain enough control to speak.

So why did I keep going? At the beginning it was because my husband, Bill, wanted to go and it was there that I learned more about how he was feeling. I was also learning from the more seasoned grievers ways of coping with my loss. All too soon I learned that TCF was actually a sanctuary, the rare place where I could try to explain my feelings or talk about Lori and her death without people trying to change the subject because they were being made uncomfortable by my words.

And it was such a relief to find out that not only was it OK to voice my darkest thoughts and feelings, but others often felt the same way too. They understood! Some months, I had to overcome my lethargy to get into the car and drive the half hour to get to the meetings, but every time I went I was thankful that I had. Looking back now, I realize that the meetings, and the friends I made at the meetings, probably saved my life.

By the spring before the second anniversary of Lori’s death, we were no longer attending every meeting. I regularly spoke with TCF friends, but didn’t feel I needed to go every month.  I had come to the point, as so many do, where I felt I’d received most of the help I would get from TCF. I might soon have stopped going to the meetings altogether.

Now I can’t even imagine who I would have become if that had happened. Instead, I was given a gift, a reason to keep attending the meetings. Our facilitator was moving out of the area and I was asked to facilitate the local meetings. I said yes and found there was a whole new world of healing when I stopped going only for myself and began to attend meetings to help others. I can’t overemphasize the importance of this turning point in my life.

From then on, every month, I had to look outside myself into the hearts and minds of others and try to give them hope. I found the intensity of my own raw pain began to take a backseat to that of others more newly bereaved than I. Because I needed to find words for THEM, to try to help ease THEIR pain, a floodgate was gradually opened in me and words, amazing words, began to fill my life.

Feelings, with the words to describe them, began to well up from my innermost being, feelings from the past, from those first months after Lori’s death, and feelings in the present, words in the form of poetry, poems to help me understand myself and poems to help others.  Truly, I believe this would not have happened if I hadn’t opened my heart to my newly bereaved compassionate friends.

I believe there is the potential for something like this to happen to all who become actively involved in the “helping” aspect of The Compassionate Friends. I don’t mean that everyone begins writing poetry. But I do believe that the greatest healing derived from TCF is this outward movement, this growth away from the self-centeredness, self-absorption of grief, towards the open hearted hope of helping others.

It comes to me that parenthood, itself, does something like this. From our self-centered, self-directed lives before our children are born, we learn the awesome responsibility of another person’s life when we first gaze upon them. Our lives change focus and their survival and growth become our highest purpose; our hearts become larger because our children are in them. When our children die, we not only hurt because the most important, most loved people of our lives are gone, but that intense focus is gone and our sense of great purpose. We wander in a wasteland, searching for what has been lost.

When Lori died, we still had our 15 year old daughter Megan at home, but I felt so crippled as a mother. How thankful I am that Megan was somehow able to get through those early years with a mother so distracted by grief – and emotionally distanced by fear. I was half a mother in more ways than one.

Now, because of TCF, I began to find a new focus for my maternal instincts and a new way to grow back into the loving mother I’d been before Lori died. As I tried to grow to the task of helping those more newly bereaved than I, just as I’d had to grow to the task of being Lori and Megan’s mother, I was benefiting three-fold. First, my “mother” energy, which is a huge part of me, was again flowing outward. Second, as I was learning ways to help others heal, I was learning them for myself. And third, once again, I began to feel that I was doing something important with my life, that my life mattered, that my life had purpose.

When I look at other bereaved parents who seem to have survived this great loss the most successfully, I find that they too have again found purpose. And often that purpose has something to do with the child who has died.  Sometimes they work towards eradicating the reason their child died: drunk driving and cancer are two examples. Some start foundations in their child’s name. Some take up and even finish the work that their child started.

Many bereaved parents, like me, have regained a sense of purpose through The Compassionate Friends. My work in TCF has given me a great sense of purpose, satisfaction in helping the newly bereaved at our monthly meetings, being part of the Steering Committee, a vital part of my chapter, and Chapter Leader. As Regional Coordinator I also try to give support to my region’s chapters, and the ripples go out from there.

And just as important to me, besides this sense of purpose, TCF has allowed me to keep Lori more visibly in my life. Wherever I go, whatever I do for TCF, Lori’s name is mentioned; Lori is not forgotten. Because what I do for TCF matters, and because all I do for TCF, I do in her name, Lori’s life continues to matter, all these years after she left this earth. Through TCF Lori remains in the forefront of all I do, the guiding star in the direction of my life. I could not have found a more loving or fitting way to honor her than I have through The Compassionate Friends.  My grief and TCF have forced me to grow in ways of which I had never dreamed.  And Lori has been with me every step of the way.

From Catching the Light – Coming Back to Life after the Death of a Child. A version of this was previously published in The Compassionate Friends’ quarterly magazine, We Need Not Walk Alone. Genesse Gentry 2010

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I don’t know.

It must have first been for moments,

then maybe hours,

days eventually.

Then for a long time

no longer ever-present,

but just below the surface

waiting for a thought to trigger it.

Now, the ingredients of my life

are suffused with contentment and joy,

but even so,

sadness can surface

unexpectedly

as the dark shape of loss

stirs the cauldron

and tears are added to the soup of life,

salty still,

but not as bitter

or overpowering,

adding an important flavor

to the whole of me.

From Catching the Light – Coming Back to Life after the Death of a Child by Genesse Bourdeau Gentry. www.afterthedeathofachild.com

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fills my heart with dread.

They’ll all be feigning gladness,

not a word about her said.

These heavy shrouds of blackness

enveloping my soul,

pervasive, throat-catching,

writhe in me, and coil.

I must, I must acknowledge,

just express her name,

so all sitting at the table,

know I’m thankful that she came.

Though she’s gone from us forever

and we mourn to see her face,

not one minute of her living,

would her death ever replace.

So I stop the cheerful gathering,

though my voice quivers, quakes,

make a toast to all her living.

That small tribute’s all it takes.

Genesse Bourdeau Gentry

from Stars in the Deepest Night –

After the Death of a Child

Genesse Gentry 2009

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Before my daughter Lori died, I was under the misperception that only the English robin had a glorious song. That smaller, red-breasted scalawag of a bird delights all who hear it, and I had felt that we in the United States had been short-changed when they’d misnamed its larger, boring American cousin the same sweet name. All I’d ever heard our robins do was cheep!

Then one June day, almost a year after Lori died, during one of the darkest times of my grief, my ears and heart flew open with surprise at a song I heard outside my window. I distinctly heard, in the midst of my pain, a bird singing loudly and clearly, “Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheerio! . . . Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheerio!” I went outside to see what marvelous bird might have been sent to sing to me. I could barely see the bird at the top of the neighbor’s poplar tree, so, while hoping this exotic, magical bird wouldn’t fly away while I was gone, I went to find our binoculars.

Rushing back, I could hear the bird from each room in the house. After adjusting the binoculars, I was truly amazed to see one of our “boring” American robins come clearly into view! As he continued singing clear as day, “Cheer up! Cheer up! Cheerio!” I marveled at this special message and wondered if my robin was the only one who sang these words. So I looked it up in my Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds and found that my robin was not an anomaly, but that robins are considered “the true harbinger of spring, singing “Cheer-up, cheer-up, cheerily.”

I stood there that day filled with wonder. I wasn’t hearing things; there it was in the bird book: “Cheer-up, cheer-up, cheerily.” I thought to myself, “Cheerily . . . No, that isn’t what I hear.” We had lived in England for a year and our family, especially Lori, who loved to put on an English accent, often said “Cheerio!” to one another when we meant, “Goodbye” or “See you later!” There was no doubt in my mind as I stood there listening. It WAS cheerio. Lori could have found no more perfect way to try to cheer me up AND say “hello!”

Nine springs have passed since then, and although I will always deeply miss Lori’s physical presence in my life, those darkest of times are thankfully now mostly in the past. It is spring once again and as I hear the robin singing so hopefully in the highest branches, it takes me back to that summer day, and I smile, remembering. And I think of all those who are now in the darkest depths of their own grief and pray they too will hear this lovely song.

From Catching the Light: Coming Back to Life After the Death of a Child, by Genesse Bourdeau Gentry (previously published in WNNWA, the magazine of the Compassionate Friends (TCF), as well as TCF newsletters). Visit www.afterthedeathofachild.com.

Genesse Bourdeau Gentry 2009

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people I know were born in February.

So when she came on Groundhog Day

I thought, Wow! How great is that!

After her death, the huge shadow of sorrow

that came with Punxsutawney Phil

darkened our determined celebrations

of her beautiful, but too short, life.

But always, when we peered out

and through our broken hearts

we found signs that she was with us,

birthday kisses on her special day.

Now, as her birthday month approaches

I know February may bring sorrow’s shadow,

but mostly I wait, wide eyed and watchful

to catch and hold the valentines she’ll send.

Genesse Bourdeau Gentry is author of Stars in the Deepest Night – After the Death of a Child, and Catching the Light: Coming Back to Life after the Death of a Child, available at www.afterthedeathofachild.com.

The post Poem: Catching Valentines appeared first on Open to Hope.

my wishes, dreams, gathered round my little one.

My life became sacred, full of promise and light

wrapped up in the child who brought love at first sight.

The years of your living filled with laughter and tears,

excitement, adventure, some boredom, some fears,

but ended too quickly, ahead of its time

the loss so horrendous, such heartbreak was mine.

But from the beginning, one thought rose so clear:

never would your death erase the years that you were here.

I would not be defeated or diminished by your death;

I would hang on, learn to conquer, if it took my every breath.

For if your death destroyed my life, made both our lives a waste,

It would deny your life’s meaning and all the love you gave.

I vowed that years of sadness would change, with work and grace,

to years of happiness, even joy, in which you’d have a place.

Memories of you, like shining stars in the patterns of my soul,

are beacons flashing light and love, and with them I am whole.

In your honor, I live my life, now living it for two;

Through all my life, you too will live – you lived, you live, you do.

— Genesse Bourdeau Gentry

Genesse Bourdeau Gentry is author of Stars in the Deepest Night – After the Death of a Child, and Catching the Light: Coming Back to Life after the Death of a Child, available at www.afterthedeathofachild.com.

This poem has appeared in The Compassionate Friends’ quarterly magazine, We Need Not Walk Alone, as well as TCF chapter newsletters. Reach Genesse Gentry through her website, www.afterthedeathofachild.com.

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