Chapter
Leader
Notes
from Toni
Dear Friends,
My name is Toni Nesheim and I am the new “leader” for
the Northern IL chapter of The Compassionate Friends. I follow
in the capable footsteps of Darlene Muno and before that, co-leaders
Jenny and Rick Selle.
I accepted this role because of my belief that the experience
of surviving the death of your child is so unique and profound
that no one else can truly understand it unless they experience
it themselves. We, as grieving parents, and siblings, need to reach
out to each other and communicate heart –to- heart, sharing
truths and feelings and thoughts that other people do not understand.
I have come to believe that this type of communication is essential
to processing grief and adjusting to a new life without your beloved
child.
The Compassionate Friends became a part of my life 5 years ago
when I felt as if the grief was too heavy and too constant to bear.
I grappled with all of the accompanying unfamiliar and powerful
emotions. I was somewhat desperate as I faced life without my then
19 year-old daughter, Rachel. I had an irrational fear of losing
my daughter again because her name would eventually go unspoken,
I would never see her name in print again and that my own frail
mind and emotions would lose the memory of her voice, her touch,
her many facial expressions. I was afraidof how I would survive
and who I would be in the future. So I gathered what little fortitude
I had remaining and my husband and I drove to the quaint little
church in Millburn where I met my compassionate friends. I was
barely capable of speaking so my husband told our painful story.
We weren’t forced to talk but in
spite of my overwhelming emotions, I wanted our experience of losing
our daughter to be shared. I found solace in hearing the experiences
of other grieving parents. Somehow, I and my husband made it through
that first meeting and I have been going to the monthly meetings
ever since.
I continue to be astounded by the grieving parents who attend
the meetings and marvel at how they have coped and more importantly
survived the death of their child. We have little choice but to
survive but we do have a choice in how much help we are willing
to accept or to give to others in our future as grieving parents.
We cannot change our horrible past of losing our child but we do
have a choice in how we fashion our future. The Compassionate Friends
have helped me to look to the future.
In my new role with The Compassionate Friends chapter, I look
forward to meeting many of you who receive the newsletter. I hope
that together we can expand our outreach to the grieving parents
in our area. It is important for all of us to remember that we
do not walk alone. Together we strengthen each other.
NOW I UNDERSTAND
Gail Bratlie
Coeur d’Alene, ID
Memorial Day never had any special meaning to me until our son,
Steve, died. In fact, I remember thinking, “What a waste
of money and how morbid to put flowers on a grave after someone
had been dead for months or years.”
Our son’s ashes are buried in the mountains of North Idaho
where he loved to camp, hunt and fish – it’s a five
hour round trip by car from our home. So we can’t visit there
often. Now, I wish his grave was closer.
So, on the Memorial Days since he died. I’ve found comfort
in visiting or taking flowers to a living family member or friend.
Or simply placing a flower on a grave in a nearby cemetery.
Now I understand why Memorial Day is a special day.
Borrowed from A JOURNEY TOGETHER, the newsletter of the Bereaved
Parents Usa, www.bereavedparentsusa.org
by Mary Wildman, Moro, Il
As I write this, I am very much aware that Mother’s Day
is coming soon. That will be a doubly difficult day in countless
homes. For all the thousands of mothers who will be glowing with
a radiant kind of pride and happiness on that day, there will also
be those of you whose hearts are aching for that phone call that
will never come, that special visit, that one Mother’s Day
card that will not arrive. For us, the reading and rereading of
that one last card - “Mom, you are the greatest and I love
you” - will have to last a lifetime. How does a mother face
a lifetime of silence on “her” day? Ask those of us
who have “been there already, and we will tell you of lonely
Mother’s Day visits to spring-green cemeteries where the
sweet clear notes of a single spring bird, perch nearby, float
over our heads and seen surely to have been intended as divine
comfort for a heart full to breaking. You will hear of yellow roses
being sent to a small church - “in memory of ...” -
and a cherished story of a kind and sensitive friend who sent a
single rose that first Mother’s Day “in remembrance.”
Always we struggle with the eternal question - how does life in
fairness exact from us the life of a beloved child in exchange
for a clear bird call in a spring-green cemetery, a slender vase
of yellow rosebuds or even the kindness and sensitivity of a friend
who remembered our loneliness and pain in that day? Where is the
fairness and justice of such a barter?
The answer comes back again and again - life does not always bargain
fairly. We are surrounded from birth to death by those things which
we cannot keep, but which enrich, ennoble and endow our lives with
a foretaste of Heaven because we have been privileged to behold,
to experience, to wrap our arms around the joyous and the beautiful.
Can we bottle the fragrance of an April morning or the splendor
of a winter’s sunset and take it home with us to place on
our fireplace mantle? Can we grasp and hold the blithesome charm
of childhood’s laughter? Can we capture within cupped hands
the beauty and richness of a rainbow? Can we pluck the glitter
of a million stars on a summer night or place in a alabaster box
the glow and tenderness of love?
No, we cannot. But to those who have been given the splendor,
the blithesome charm, the glory, the glitter, the tenderness and
the love of a child who has departed, someday the pain will speak
to you of enrichment, of compassion for others, of deeper sensitivity
to the world about you, of a deeper joy for having known a deeper
pain. Your child will not have left you completely, as you thought.
But rather you will find him in that first clear, sweet bird call,
in those yellow rosebuds, in giving and in receiving and in the
tissue-wrapped memories that you hold forever in your heart.
Lovingly borrowed from A JOURNEY TOGETHER - NEWSLETTER OF THE
BEREAVED PARENTS OF THE USA - VOLUME VII NO. 2, SPRING 2002 (April,
May and June)
WHAT
DOES MAY BRING?
Tracy Rhein
BP/USA Central Arkansas
First, May brings MOTHER’S DAY - another painful holiday.
Commercials are everywhere; I can’t check e-mail without
being bombarded with ads for gifts and cards for Mother’s
Day. Some churches honor the oldest mother, the youngest mother
and the mother with the most children present. Then there are the
flowers – wear a red flower if your mother is living and
a white one if your mother has died. (I keep hearing carnations,
but it was always roses when I was a child.) Some years ago, some
bereaved mothers started wearing a yellow flower, either alone
or with the traditional color, honoring their own mother.
It helped me to know the origin of Mother’s Day. After Anna
Jarvis’s mother died May 9, 1905, Anna decided a Sunday in
May should be set aside to honor her mother and all mothers. Anna
felt her mother deserved recognition because, although her life
was filled with sorrow, she lived selflessly and showed kindness
and generosity toward others. Anna was one of four surviving siblings;
seven others died in early childhood and Anna’s mother mourned
those seven children throughout her life. Anna never married and
never had a child of her own. Her work to establish a day
to honor her mother persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to proclaim
the second Sunday in May as a national holiday honoring all mothers.
Finally newly bereaved mothers commonly have some questions that
are acute on this day. For those who have no surviving children,
so far as I am concerned, you are a mother. For the rest of you,
each one has to decide how to answer the question of “how
many children do you have?”
I am still the mother of three children although one is no longer
on earth with me.
I hope each of you find some peace on this Mother’s Day
and that knowing it specifically honored a bereaved mother will
make each succeeding one a little easier.
MEMORIAL DAY was established to honor those who died in the military
defending our nation, but has become a time of general remembrance.
I pass one small cemetery in southwest Arkansas fairly frequently
and always see that fresh white stones have been spread before
Memorial Day and every grave appears to have a new flower arrangement.
As a child, my parents would take me with them but I had never
known any of the relatives whose graves we visited. Perhaps, as
we get older, we think that someday we will do this for our parents
or grandparents but never our children. My son was cremated and
I don’t have a grave to visit but this holiday has far more
impact on me now.
May also brings GRADUATIONS. Whether from kindergarten, grade
school, high school or college, this is a rite of passage that
some of our children never reached. If your child was close to
graduation, the school may recognize him or her in some way. Or
another child (sibling, cousin, friend) may be graduating and
receiving their announcement may bring a special ache.
We hope you all plan ahead and discuss with family members and
caring friends so that you can get through these events with a
minimum of pain
Lovingly borrowed
from A JOURNEY TOGETHER - NEWSLETTER OF THE BEREAVED PARENTS
OF THE USA - VOLUME VII NO. 2, SPRING 2002 (April, May and June)
SEEDS TO GROW
Bridie Tracy, Bereavement Magazine, Colorado Springs, CO 80918
- 1-888-604-4673
Spring is when we think of things growing. We see a rebirth of
the barren trees and we watch the grass getting greener. Some of
the perennial flowers start to bloom. It makes me wonder just what
happens to
life. This is also when many of us think of planting some form
of garden.
May
is the birth month of my first son. He loved flowers, but not gardening.
It was a chore to get him to help with yard work but he would often
ask me the names of different flowers. Roses were his favorite.
Somehow all this led me to thinking about our grief when a child
dies.
After my children died, I was aware that seeds had been planted
and were growing within me.
The first seed was anger. I was angry at my youngest son for
being careless with his precious life and angry at God for not
taking better care of him. I was bitter because I would not experience
events in my life that others would have: graduations, weddings,
Sunday dinners and Little League games for my grandchildren. Nor
would I have anyone to whom I could pass down family heirlooms
and traditions.
But there were other kinds of seeds growing too. There were caring
and kind friends who tried to help or say the right thing. Many
were mere acquaintances who went out of their way to showcaring
and concern. Gradually I became aware of compassion growing in
me. It is the kind of compassion that comes from knowing the pain
and sorrow that someone else is experiencing.
There are no words that can express this kind of compassion. I
look at obituary columns and, whether one listed is young, immediately
my thoughts are of the parents. I know their soul racking pain
and I spend a moment in prayer for them, hoping to help them through
an awful time. Thus compassion
takes the form of not expecting others whose children have died
to be able to function well for a very long time. This compassion
has grown out of my own pain and out of the love I have for children.
Sometimes, I’m aware of the struggle these seedlings have
within me. Which of them will become strong and survival try to
fertilize the gentle, caring and compassionate seedlings, but,
sometimes, like weeds in a garden, the bitterness and anger creep
in and all but choke the other seedlings. It seems I have to be
vigilant in nurturing the seedlings I want to represent the effect
my children’s lives have had on me.
In their memory, I will continue
to weed out the anger, bitterness, impatience and intolerance.
I will do this to show them my undying love.
Lovingly borrowed from A JOURNEY TOGETHER - NEWSLETTER OF THE BEREAVED
PARENTS OF THE USA - VOLUME VII NO. 2, SPRING 2002 (April, May
and June)
Northern Lake County Illinois Chapter
SOMETIMES
A MAN NEEDS TO CRY 
SPRING;
HOPE OR MORE PAIN 
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