The Compassionate Friends
Blue ButterflyNorthern Lake County Illinois Chapter

 

 

May Newsletter

 

 
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)

SOMETIMES A MAN NEEDS TO CRY

Lewis Grizzard, Columnist
Atlanta Constitution

The man’s friend, Jennifer wrote me a letter and told me about his problem. These sort of things make you sick, but they happen and then what is left to do is somehow find a way to cope.

The man had two daughters. They were bright and they were beautiful. One was 16. The other was 18. Last year the girls were in an auto accident. They were hit by a drunk driver. The 16 year old lingered for a week. Then the doctors determined she was brain dead and she was disconnected from the life support system. In a week the man had buried both his daughters.

“All his life,” Jennifer wrote, “he had been the pillar of strength for his family, his church and his many friends.” He had never weakened in
his support for them when they needed him. I guess that’s why he didn’t show us the grief he knew that was inside him. “I never even saw him cry. I guess he was just trying to hold on so we wouldn’t see that big, crumbling heart he was hiding.” You can’t hide a heart like that for very long. In the year since his daughter’s deaths, the man has had two heart attacks. Jennifer is convinced it is his grief that is causing his health to decline steadily.

In the letter, Jennifer also asked me to do something I don’t normally like to do, and that is to use this column to give somebody a message. Some people write and want me to wish their mothers Happy Birthday in this space. Others want me to write something as a practical joke on some of their friends. I would
have to go out and find a real job if I resorted to things like that. But I’m going to break my rule just this once. The letter almost pleaded with me.

“He reads your column,” Jennifer wrote. “ I know you’re not Dear Abby but maybe there is something you can say to our friend. It’s time for him to realize that grown men do cry, that it’s OK to let grief and sorrow flow out like a river among family and friends. The doctors don’t know what to do about him, but I think there are just some remedies that don’t come from a bottle or an operating room.”
Jennifer is right. I’m no Dear Abbey nor a counselor, nor a minister, nor a psychiatrist. But, if the man is reading this column – and he certainly would know he is the subject of it by this time – maybe I can make a few points.

It is obvious your friends love you, sir, and they care about you. By not sharing your grief with them, by not leaning on them in time of your greatest need, you are hurting them. And it hurts them to see you unwilling to share your burden with them. It hurts them that you are depriving them the ability to help you.

The heart is an amazing mechanism. Give it half a chance and it will mend itself and the best place to start is to put your arms around somebody who loves you and cry. Contrary to what a number of us dumb clucks think, tears often are a grown man’s best friend.

Lovingly borrowed from A JOURNEY TOGETHER - NEWSLETTER OF THE BEREAVED PARENTS OF THE USA - VOLUME VII NO. 2, SPRING 2002 (April, May and June)

 

SPRING; HOPE OR MORE PAIN

Margaret Gerner
BP/USA – St. Louis, MO

Here it comes! Spring! Flowers blooming, weather warming, the cold of winter is behind us. We’re coming up out of our pain. Right? Wrong!

My six-year-old son, Arthur, was killed by an automobile on Friday, May 28, 1971. The Easter before was the last time we were together as a
complete family. For years after, spring, and especially the Easter season, began, again, the realization that we were no longer a complete family, and never would be again. Each year brought a new year of pain.

When the first spring came after Arthur was killed, I thought I would be better. Buds popped out, and my sadness was deeper. Easter came, and my pain was no less. The temperature rose, but the coldness in my heart never left. 

Many more springs came – and none of them brought the relief I prayed for. For me, the hope and renewal that was supposed to be a part of spring was a lie.

Ironically though, the beginning of the resolution of my grief began in the spring of 1978. My grief, which by this time had become prolonged and distorted, created a number of other problems in my life. Among them was the deterioration of my marriage.

We began seeing a marriage counselor. I couldn’t believe it when he told me that it was not only acceptable, but necessary, to face Arthur’s death and talk about the pain and emotions I had been encouraged to suppress all these years.

Mine is a long story of struggle and determination, of steps and missteps and pain and sadness and loss. But it’s also a long story of change and growth. The beginning of the resolution of my grief may have started then, but it didn’t all happen in spring. It took place over many seasons.

Various seasons are significant for all of us. The Christmas holidays may be significant for you. The middle of June may be significant for someone else. A colorful fall may be significant for another. But, for some reason, we are led to believe that spring will bring a lessening of our pain. This is not true. Spring is simply a time of year. It’s a date. It’s a season. It’s symbolic. But, spring is not magic.

Yes, it holds promises, but those promises are only brought to fruition when we work at them. Spring can be the impetus for change. The changes that take place in nature can cause us to do what we need to do to resolve our grief. The beauty of spring can be the factor that encourages us to find beauty in our lives again. Yes, we see growth and change and renewal all around us in spring. But it won’t happen for us unless we make it happen.

In early grief, we hardly see spring come. We are so immersed in our pain and desolation that it is hard to see anything. Just as winter comes before spring, dark, painful grief work comes before we begin to see the light of comfortable life again. 
Don’t expect to sidestep the healthy, albeit painful, normal, and long process of grief. Don’t endow a season with magic to make changes in you.

Hard, painful grief work is what will get you to the other side of your child’s death, not a date on the calendar.

Lovingly borrowed from A JOURNEY TOGETHER - NEWSLETTER OF THE BEREAVED PARENTS OF THE USA - VOLUME VII NO. 2, SPRING 2002 (April, May and June)

 

 

 

 

   

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