Turning Tragedy into a Positive..

Thank you to Saundra Blanknship for sharing this story with us quite some time ago, that was published in her local Ft. Worth, TX paper several years ago..  Saundra saved it to give to her cousin who had just lost her little boy and shared it with us when she found our blog...hoping it might help ease the pain and give some hope to another grieving mom...

~ Written By Local Reporter Kyle Peveto 5.15.2008

For months after her 9-year-old son died in a bizarre car accident, Myra Dean remained in shock.  She took a job in Saipan, a commonwealth of the United States in the Pacific Ocean, and had no idea what to do with her grief until she read about the Compassionate Friends group in a Guam newspaper. The newsletters she received from the organization of bereaved parents helped her understand that she was not alone and that she would be forever changed.

When the StoryCorps Airstream trailer came to Abilene this spring, Dean's boyfriend insisted they reserve a spot to record her story. Her emotional telling of the death of her son Rich struck StoryCorps producers enough that they edited the 40-minute session into a shorter feature that is tentatively scheduled to run on National Public Radio's Morning Edition at 5:30 and 7:30 a.m. Friday.

"It's very raw. She talks about how painful it is. She talks about her feelings, about God and about how she overcame this over time. A bereaved parent is always a bereaved parent. The pain never leaves you," said Gary Jamison, Dean's boyfriend, who conducted the interview in March.

"It comes across on the (recording). It speaks to you; it pulls at your heartstrings."

While living in Kansas City, Kan., 31 years ago, Dean separated from her husband and moved into a home on a quiet street with her son. He was riding his bicycle one Friday evening in May when Dean was preparing to spend a night out with friends. When she went to pick up the baby sitter two blocks away, she left Rich riding his bicycle with his friend, telling him to watch for cars.

Returning, she saw a crowd near Rich's friend's house and an ambulance. Immediately, she knew it was her son. "Some people don't believe that you can know that," she said in her StoryCorps interview. "I don't know if it's the tie between a mother and children, or me and Rich in particular, but I knew."

Rich had been playing in the yard, watching the sunset, when an out-of-control car flipped over the hedge and landed on Rich and his friend. The friend was unscathed. Rich was crushed.

Her father died later that summer, and Dean felt amazed that no one understood her pain.

"Expectations are that in a year, you'll be better. But after the first year, the shock is just wearing off," she told the Reporter-News. "After that is the real roller-coaster ride."

Years later, after founding the first Compassionate Friends chapter in Abilene, she began speaking each semester to an Abilene Christian University class on death and dying. She tried to help the students empathize with a parent who has lost a child.

"When you lose your child, that was your future. ... Even genetically, I was a part of my parents, but they were not a part of me," she said in the interview. "Richard was genetically, physically part of me. And when I talk I always try to find ways to explain to people about the pain, and I say it's as if you've had an invisible amputation."  "At some point you get over the pity and say, 'This is life.'"

Jamison heard her speak last fall and encouraged her to write a book or tell the story to other bereaved parents. Then he scheduled the time with StoryCorps.  Dean said her life is "like a soap opera." She also has survived kidney cancer and bears an S-shaped scar from the surgery.

Tuesday was the 31st anniversary of Rich's death. For years, she remembered him painfully, but now she acknowledges the day.  Now, Dean is the development director for KACU, Abilene's NPR station at ACU. Next to her desk is a framed drawing by Rich of an ocean scene with blue whales and men swimming with tridents.

Rich's death changed her life.  She said she knows she will never "get over" his death, but she has learned to live with his memory.

The bonds that never end……

~ by Cherie Houston

To me and for many of us who unwillingly have joined this club of moms whose children have died, the bonds that we had with our children who have died, often seem as strong as they were when they were alive.  Yes the bonds are now different, but the fact that the bonds are still there seems as natural as our love for each of them..  

Believe it or not, for those of us who have lost a child, the relationship we had with them continues on long after their deaths, just differently than when they were alive ~ whether for that unborn child and all the hopes & dreams they carried with them, for those of us with adult children and all those little ones in between...  Yes-the bonds are still there...

It certainly surprises me sometimes, how often I find myself talking to my children, especially to my son who was addicted to the telephone from the time he was a little boy..  Part of it is habit I suppose ~ he called more often than any of our children so maybe that's why the conversations continue-although one sided now...  But like so many moms I talk to, there seems to be a certain peace when we talk to our children who are gone, and yes some of us talk to our children more often than others.  And we often find ourselves including special memories of them during conversations about our other children or life in general; and many of us continue to celebrate days that were special to them, such as their birthdays….  

For most of us, we seem to find that those bonds, however expressed, are quite melancholy and can bring on a wide range of emotions, including warmth and comfort and in just moments, sadness and heartache… Amazing how even months and years later, a day can be filled with many memories that generate various emotions that can cause smiles and tears…  Bonds with our children begin when they are conceived and most of us agree that nothing, including death-unless our own, can break those bonds…And for that I’m grateful…

During meetings of other moms who’ve lost children, it’s not surprising to hear:

“My alone time in the car is when I talk to him most often and I can actually feel his presence”…

“She seems to be all around – it’s a sense that I have – I can’t explain it, but it’s as though she’s beside me nudging me on and encouraging me to smile…”

“I carry her license in my wallet. Whenever I need strength I hold it and it gives me the strength and motivation to go on”.

“I gave away most of her things, but I’ve kept a few of her favorite toys so I can hold them and remember her playing with them, especially her little yellow car….”

“I go back to the hospital often to volunteer – it gives me a sense of peace to know that it really happened ~ that he was really here with us and it’s not all just a dream”

“On his anniversary we went to the very spot where he died – I’m not sure why, and I’m not even sure it helped – but it was something we had to do – and for a moment I felt a sense of relief and peace that I can’t explain – just for a moment… 

"She is still the first person I speak to when I close my eyes at night and often the first person I think of in the morning, which gives me the strength to go on..."

The Grief Of The Parents: A Lifetime Journey

From website: http://www.athealth.com/consumer/disorders/parentalgrief.html

This article, was sent to me a few months after my son Bobby died in Sept. 2009. This article, like some others I have received since Bobby’s death, is one that I refer to it often…

The following is an excerpt"their conclusion" of the article. To me it seems to summarize well what so many of us know from our experience ~ I wish others, who are fortunate enough to never experience this loss, could comprehend in some small way the impact of our loss - the death of a child is different, very different, from any other loss we will ever experience… Cherie Houston

Children are valuable and precious symbols of what lies ahead. Children are considered the hope of the future. When a child dies, that hope is lost.

Two universals stand out when reflecting on parental grief-a child's death is disorienting, and letting go of a child is impossible. Parents never forget a child who dies. The bond they formed with their child extends beyond death. As survivors, bereaved parents try to adapt to the new existence forced on them. They try to pass on to others the love and other special gifts they received from their child; they try to make the child who died a part of their lives forever; they constantly try to "honor the child who should have lived" (Finkbeiner 1996, xiv). Bereaved parents encourage others who care for and about them to do the same. They ask others to help them, to be for them "a lifeline of support, a lifeline to survival [and to understand]...the crying of their souls" (Donnelly 1982, ix).

Bereaved parents say, "Our children are in our blood; the bond with them doesn't seem to break [and they attempt to] find subtle and apparently unconscious ways of preserving that bond" (Finkbeiner 1996, xiii, xiv). Bereaved parents need to do this to deal with what seems like an endless roadblock of loss and sadness. One bereaved parent expressed it by saying that the wound heals, but the scar remains forever.

What has happened to these parents has changed their lives; they will never see life the same way; they will never be the same people. As they attempt to move forward, bereaved parents realize they are survivors and have been strong enough to endure what is probably life's harshest blow. By addressing their grief and coping with it, they struggle to continue this journey while making this devastating loss part of their own personal history, a part of their life's story, a part of their very being.