Grief is one of the loneliest places in the world. When my son died, I felt every connection I had ever had was gone. I felt invisible even to myself. When I looked in the mirror, I was surprised to see my reflection staring back at me. I was surprised there was enough life in me to generate a reflection.
Somehow I thought my face would be gone, just like my identity. In one life altering moment, every thing I had ever known or thought I knew was either unrecognizable or gone. My son had died and left no forwarding address. It did not matter that I thought he was in heaven. I wanted him here with me.
Fourteen-year-old boys were supposed to be at home keeping life interesting and their parents on their toes, not somewhere without cell phones or e-mail. Not somewhere without the family that loves them and who wants so desperately to talk to them.
At first, I thought it must be some kind of cosmic joke or God having a really bad day. How else could I explain my son’s death? To myself? To anyone? Worse yet, how could I live with it if it was just a random act? If it was just, being in the wrong place at the wrong time? If I could not make sense of it, how could I live with it? But then how could any mother make sense of her child’s death?
I couldn’t, no matter how hard I tried. That made me angry. It was not fair that my child died. Not to me, not to his sister, not to the hundred or more other people who loved him, not to the family members yet to be born, who would not get to meet him. Somehow, even though I still would hate his dying, the unfairness of it just made it worse.
My son’s death felt like my life sentence, a burden I didn’t want to know how to bear. I just wanted my life back and my life meant my son here with me. My days became an attempt to live with the unlivable. Many days I didn’t know if I’d make it and many days I didn’t want to. Living had become too hard and too painful. No one knew who I was anymore. Neither did I. I no longer knew the person living in my skin. The face in the mirror looked like me but that is all I was, a face in a mirror.
I was learning a new kind of loneliness. The kind that comes when you don’t know how to find yourself. The kind that comes when you can’t tell someone what you need from them, because you do not know. The kind that you wear when you go to bed at night and can’t take off in the morning. It has become a part of you. Grief is feeling alone in your own skin.
Deb Kosmer
debrakosmer@gmail.com
© 2007
Deb, I couldn’t have said it better myself. No one understands this pain unless they are living it. I lost my 24 year old son 21 months ago and the pain is something that I never dreamed could exist. I still think it is a dream sometimes and when I look in the mirror, my reflections says it all. We all have to keep together because unfortunatley we are the only ones that understand. Thank you for sharing.
I too lost my son just over a year ago at 28 years old unexpectedly. It has been a very tough year for me, I feel like I have had to grieve alone because my familys grief is different than mine. They do not talk about our son, that is just the way they deal with it I think. If it were not for Presbyterian Hospice in Charlotte, NC (with a bereavement specialist) I do not know how I could have survived this tragedy. Like you hear, you never “get over” the death of your child, you just learn to live with it and try to maintain some kind of normalcy in your life. Some weeks are better than others, it is just like a roller-coaster, you never know when/where the feeling of overwhelming sadness is going to come, it just does. But I have learned that now I understand how others feel with the loss of a child because like you hear our children are not “supposed” to leave this world before we do.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
My son was killed 16 months ago. I was told i would feel better after a few months. I can tell you i don’t. The pain is overwhelming and relentless. Some times its all i can do to take the next breath. But I have to pretend all is well for the rest of the world as they don’t understand and i think don’t want to understand. “Good!” they say. “Your over it and have moved on!” I tell them my smile is for them. They are puzzled. Seems no matter what I do to feel better I come back to the same thing, he is still dead. I wish there was a magic wand to wave over all of us going through this and make the pain go away.
Oh – how well you put into words exactly what I feel every minute of every day. I lost my only child at age 24.