The following is an excerpt from From a Grieving Mother’s Heart.
An excerpt from earlier in this book containing the diary of a bereaved mother is available here.
Diary of a Bereaved Mother
January 13th (Day 221)
Now that the young man who caused your death has been
meted his punishment and the courts have done their job . . .
or did they . . . I should be able to “turn the page” and move
forward, but it’s not easy. Grieving is full of many sharp
turns and curves, and they often catch me off-balance like
they did yesterday.
I had a terrible day. Loneliness and sadness hung heavily
around my neck, making me morose and angry. Every time
I turned around, you were in my thoughts, and not the good
memories—the hard ones. An ambulance passed us, and I
began to cry. And tears gushed from my eyes as I walked
through the floral department at the grocery store because
I know that the most I can now do for you is to put fresh
flowers on your grave. Then Dad and I were cleaning out
the cabinet below the fish tank and I found some of your
college-related paperwork as well as a note you had written
to us a few months before you died, and I began to cry.
Diary of Mom: Exhausted by the Pain
All day long pain seeped through every pore of me, leaving
me feeling hopeless and as though this aching will never
be better. If I had to deal with it at this intensity for any
extended period of time, I couldn’t take it. I feel so terribly
beaten down and exhausted from the whole process. But I
have to remember that was yesterday, and not every day
has been like that. As my sister Kathy said, it takes longer
and longer for the pressure to build up under my emotions
now. I have to remember that, and not be hard on myself,
but to gently love myself through one more step.
Why did it all happen, Rob? Why? Sure, we can put all
kinds of rational answers to that question as well as we
can come up with all of the logical steps to grieving, but
this is not a logical experience. Losing you was a heavily
emotional experience, one that tore through the very heart
of me, racing past my mind and ignoring its attempt to try
to put this into a box of orderly feelings and experiences.
There is no box that my sadness and grief will fit into. It
bounces off the walls of my pain and logic to reverberate
around my heart.
Diary of a Bereaved Mother: ‘I hate holidays’
May 10th (Day 338)
I’m beginning to hate holidays. This would have been
just another Sunday where we went to church, maybe to
breakfast, and then home. I would have thought of you
some today the way I do every day, but today is Mother’s
Day, and that brought the pain of your loss screaming down
against my heart. We went to church, out to breakfast and
then stopped by your grave. I looked at the grass that is
now completely grown over where your coffin lies deep
within the ground, and I thought about one year ago. Back
then, I had a son. Now, I don’t. What else will life bring?
Will Mother’s Day ever come again without pain?
Holidays are made for happy people . . . for people whose
lives have never been touched by pain. And I don’t believe
people like that exist. So, why do we keep having holidays?
I truly think I hate them. At least, today I do.
Mother’s Journal: Two Years Later
June 7th (Day 734)
Why is life? What is life? I’m not sure. I don’t know if I’ll
ever be sure. You’ve been gone for two years now, Rob. The
years are flying by. I’ve adjusted to your death, but the
pain is still there. The fingers of that pain don’t reach out
into the rest of my life like they used to, but if I step into
the room of memories, the pain still sears its way through
I’ve adjusted to your death, but I’ll never get used to it,
nor will it ever be okay.
Diary Entry: A Bright White Blanket
August 12th (Day 800)
Life is perplexing, confusing, delightful and painful . . .
rolled up like a snowball that has picked up the rocks and
debris lying under the bright, white blanket of freshly
fallen snow.
My life is like that. The present is the blanket of snow;
my past, the rocks and debris that are hidden just below. It
doesn’t take much effort to get to the debris. As the white
blanket of happiness, contentment, self-esteem grows
thicker, the creations of my everyday existence are less
convoluted by the junk under the surface.
Let it snow…let it snow!
To read more from this diary, click to find this article:
https://www.opentohope.com/diary-of-a-bereaved-mother-part-1/
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