Mourning the Unknown
October 24th, 2007I’ve recently been thrust back in time to when my dad died. I was doing all the work around thinking about the aftermath and how that event changed my life so completely. There isn’t a major decision in my life that hasn’t been touched by my dad dying when he did. Grieving this event and reviewing it is at once a hobby and rich field of heartache. There are memories good and bad, things I can conjecture about and things I wish were different. But he’s gone and I have to be okay with that or else my life will be torture. He’d want me to move forward. Not be a pansy ass.
The last few weeks have been really difficult. We lost the future. We lost a question mark. Part of my man brain won’t accept that it was a life yet, but I’m still sad. I don’t want to belabor the point or wallow in it, because that’s not moving forward.
I remember having a conversation about 10 years ago or so with a friend on a ski lift. I conjectured that most of my friends acted a certain way in life because we were young, but also because most of us hadn’t experienced loss. Loss of a friend, family member or loss of a great job; it didn’t matter. Just loss. I may have been wrong, but I suspect that’s true of most young people. Until one goes through death of some kind life is lived a certain way with a certain approach. After going through a loss, life is lived no less certainly, but every choice and reaction that follows the loss is formed by it in strange and unforeseen ways. It’s as if the loss itself becomes a separate entity. It’s the event and the emotions. I suppose it makes it easier for me to see it like this, but that’s how I’ve been getting through these past days.
I don’t know who our unborn child would have become and I never will. I don’t know if this event deserves the amount of attention I’m giving it. Some of my reticence is because I’m a man and cannot carry a child. I will never know what it is like to miscarry a child from a physical standpoint. Some of my hesitance to share anything is because there are a whole bunch of other people who have miscarried more times and under more painful circumstances. Still, I am sad.
However, there is always tomorrow. There is always the new. I have to think that this happened for some reason or set of reasons that I’ll never understand. I must move forward or else be consumed by a question mark of grief. o
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October 25th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Jon the rawness of this post is really touching. It must be so hard to grieve over something that you never knew, that you can’t say remember the time when and laugh through your tears at the happy stuff. Instead it’s all the awful what might have been’s.
As we all know time will heal but until the day comes when it’s not so bad just cuddle Chuck. Dogs know. Love to you and Heather.
October 26th, 2007 at 12:17 am
Thanks, everybody.
For another take on miscarriage:
http://www.hchamp.com/other/archives/001265.html
Damn. Hugs to the Chawazeks.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:10 am
I recently read a similar post on another blog. It was posted by a grandmother whose daughter-in-law had miscarried. She had already endowed her future grandchild with hopes and dreams. Like you, she had questions about how sad she should be when others had suffered more. I’ll tell you what I told her. It’s your pain and you don’t have to diminish it, qualify it or explain it.
I’m sorry for your loss. I wish for you and your wife a healing that will help you to move forward.
Thank you for an insightful and revealing post.
October 26th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Grief, sadness, is valid. Comparing your pain to others isn’t fair, and I think you know this. Only way through it is *through* it; feeling it.
This is a beautifully written and, as others have said, a heartfelt post.
I wish you and Heather strength and healing.
October 26th, 2007 at 11:32 am
You and Heather are both very strong people.
I appreciate how you both are willing to share what is happening/has happened in your lives, with all of us who read your blogs.
Moving foward can be painful and difficult, sometimes trudging slowly, but progress being made.. I think that’s the key. And you both are making progress whether you know it or not.
And no matter the circumstances of the loss… it’s still painful and yours.. and you have the right to grieve it.
It doesn’t mean anyone elses loss is any less significant.. just that yours is siginificant too… to you.. and to all of us who read about it.
Kate
October 26th, 2007 at 11:34 am
p.s. I lost a baby girl, it’ll be 25 years ago this December.. I still remember the day, the circumstances.. I still at times stop and wonder who she would be today.. why did it happen. I still move forward.. but she was a part of me and so she goes with me.
October 26th, 2007 at 11:36 am
“I must move forward ”
That’s the key to life– plowing forward through the shit and the grief. But it’s also stopping to see the sunsets and the flowers and the friends and family who love us, and to make sure we dance at a moment’s notice, sing loudly along with the radio, and laugh out loud as frequently as possible.
The phrase that carries me through life is from Desiderata– “Surely the universe is unfolding as it should”. Even if we don’t have a blankety-blank clue why.
Southerngirl, who is slowly recovering (mentally and physically) from running her beautiful, new Toyota RAV 4 into the back of a dump truck. (sigh) The only fun thing about THAT adventure was when the policeman who worked the accident walked up to my broken car and said, “I really like your “Stewart-Colbert 08″ bumper sticker. Where can I get one?”
October 26th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Thank you. My mother just passed away October 3rd from a long battle with Inflammatory Breast Cancer. She was 60 years old. It is amazing how you have put into words what these last few weeks have felt like in making decisions and living my life. It has changed.
Please know you and Heather are in my thoughts everyday.
November 8th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
beautifully expressed. i am so sorry for your loss.
November 12th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
I thought I’d share some myth busters:
There is nothing wrong for feeling sad about a loss. There are no equations to define how much one grieves based on who had it worse than you in the formula. One can grieve and celebrate life’s continous momentum, neither detracts from the other.
How we feel is a reflection of the care we have for the soul that past, not a definition of weakness.
Glad you shared. Hope you don’t judge yourself too hard if grief lingers for a time longer.
~GoGo