How Does a Mother Grieve

It's been 8 months already. I can hardly type that much less say it out loud. The fact that life has gone on when the world seemed to end for us seems so incredibly wrong. And yet that's the reality. Life did keep moving. Days go on but he is not here anymore, his crib is empty and the whole house aches for his laugh, his beautiful smile, his happy spirit. And he thinks we left him. He will carry the hurt of that abandonment his whole life. That is the hardest part. The absolute best way to torture a mother is to make her watch her child suffer. (Mother of Jesus, pray for us!)
I am angry. Anger that I work and pray daily to overcome because it has stolen my peace and spirit of kindness.
And I am so sad, a broken shell of a person really. I could cry all day, every day, and it would not be enough.
But I am mother. I can not possibly stop to cry all day. Sometimes I sneak in a quick 2 minutes in the bathroom, and then someone is needing me. Someone is fighting over their favorite book and none of the 200 others we have will substitute. I am not ready to stop crying, but I dry my eyes and go read the book to them both.
How does a mother grieve? Because all the experts say it's not healthy to suppress grief but they aren't exactly lining up to cook my family meals and clean my house while I cry an oceans worth of tears and look through photos and remember the good times. And even if they were, my grieving children need their mother, they lost their brother and shouldn't have to lose their mother too.
Except sometimes it feels like they did. That person I used to be I just can't be anymore, no matter how hard I try.
But the laundry still piles up and demands to be washed, the dishes follow suit. The kids still need rides to school, and help with homework, and to get signed up for summer sports. Life keeps happening even though I am in no shape to handle it.  There isn't a choice when you're a mother.
But in order to function in this life that demands me I must live in a state of denial or numbness. This allows me to function, to get out of bed and do the dishes and fold the laundry and make meals, but its a counterfeit way of living really. When you're numb, you don't feel bad or good emotion. Its how I survived, but its not how I want to become my normal.
So I know, I need to grieve.
But how does a mother grieve a child who's still alive? That's a question for another post I think.
How does a mother grieve? Slowly, I think. A little at a time. To a mother, who feels so deeply, who loves so completely, the reality of the loss of a child threatens to be too much for our hearts to handle. So I feel it in small doses. For only a few fleeting moments, and then pack it away if I can. But I have to be sure, to come back to it. I don't want to. I remember how much it hurts to let my heart go to that place where I admit its real, it happened, it's over. I don't look through photos, I can hardly say his name without going to that place. So often I just don't. But a mother needs to, I know, because a mother can't keep running on auto pilot, barely scraping by with her duties while life barrels full speed ahead.
This is hard, because even though we want to pack away our grief, it doesn't mean it's cleanly away until we reach for it again, it just means I don't allow myself to feel the full extent of it all the time. It's always there.
Grief colors everything, I read somewhere. Was it Harry Potter? Someone wise anyway said its like putting on a pair of colored glasses. Everything in life, everything you see or do takes on new meaning because of this grief. And I think that meaning can be dark, and grief can make everything hard or sad. But I believe it could also color everything with light, the hope of eternal life. That if something this terrible exists, surely it refocuses us that our hope is not in this world but in the next. Surely this grief, this reality of the hurt of this little boy and all my children and of my husband and myself, all of it only makes sense in the light of Jesus. That what happens here is not the end. Wow have we messed up this world with our "let me do it my way" attitudes, and how patient is our God to comfort us each time. We see in our messes and prayers of desperation that seem to go unanswered that God isn't concerned with an outcome here, with making our lives perfect here, but instead he is concerned whether or not we (and so many others who touch our lives) choose heaven. Seen through this lens, its easier to endure hardship. Easier to overcome obstacles, easier to keep moving forward. Grief colors everything. As the scriptures read today at mass proclaim, "let the dead bury their dead." Lk 9:60. Death most of all should remind us to stop looking backward, or downward, and set our hands to the plow (read Lk 9:62) to the work we've been called to do and look forward, upward. So often, we can't take our focus off of the ground where someone lays dead and decaying to see them in their glory up above where they belong.
I know it's not always that easy. We can't just tell ourselves to "get over it" when a loss is so large.


In my 34 years I have been overall very healthy. These last few months I have been more sick and in pain than ever before. I got a bacterial infection that put me on the couch for 5 days. I started having lower back pain that made it impossible to sleep longer than a few hours at night at a time. And then I fell down the stairs and popped three ribs out of place that made it difficult to move at all. My foot has developed a weird pain that gets worse each day and makes it difficult to walk or run. Each given day I seem to have some type of pain and I've noticed just how difficult pain makes the easiest things. Well, sleeping, for example, didn't used to be difficult at all for me. But bending over to pick up toys, picking up a child,  carrying loads of laundry, pretty much every action I do all day long is affected by this pain.
Just like that physical pain, the emotional pain of grief is always there. Pain makes everything that used to be simple very difficult or even impossible. And I push through it and try to change the way I do things to make them less painful. And I pray I'm not like this forever. That I can go back to easily picking things up off the floor. And chasing the kids in a game of tag. And I dream that someday I might be able to run a few miles again.
Right now it feels like my body might not ever do that again. And yet, forever is a very long time. I have to believe (hope) that I will get better. That SLOWLY I will regain some of those things back. That eventually I will walk without pain, or at least with a normal gate. That eventually, I will chase and even be able to catch them. That someday, a morning run will be a normal thing for me again and the freedom and joy that accompanies it.
And if I believe that, then I also have to believe the same of my heart. That I will regain a spirit of positivity and love and joy. That I will again see the good in the world. That there will be days when I won't feel anger or hurt and experience the freedom and joy that accompanies a heart filled with peace.
Sometimes injuries are temporary and we heal completely. Sometimes injuries are more severe and it takes longer to heal, sometimes we never fully heal. Reality in this world, is that every day I'm getting older, and chances are there will be a day when I run for the last time. I hope that's a very long time from now, but at some point it will be true.
Some emotional hurts in this life cut so deep, injure us so badly, it seems impossible that we will ever fully heal, ever be back to our original state.
And that's probably the hardest part about grief, the fear that we will be like this forever.
But that would be a world without Jesus, without the Holy Spirit. In our world, the reality is that our God is alive and living with us and the promise He left us with is that there is absolutely no wound that He cannot heal. That "His power is made perfect in our weakness" 2 Cor 12:9. Not only heal, but USE this grief to bring about His glory. He promised in this hardest moment, worst version of ourselves, most helpless and weak time in our lives He will do His best work. SLOWLY. The best work happens slowly, just look at creation, look at a two hundred year old tree.
Right now, I don't feel like I will ever run again, and I don't feel like I will ever be the joyful mom, wife, friend that I used to be. But I believe, I believe You will heal me. I believe that even from this nightmare that every mother fears, I believe You can make even this beautiful. And I really can't wait to see you do it.

I took this photo of my friends daughter praying after her aunt was suddenly taken at a young age in a car accident and led by the spirit texted her the title of the song "Look Up Child" by Lauren Daigle. Its a good soundtrack for you today if you're grieving. This grief you're experiencing might be bringing people to their knees at the foot of the cross, and if it is, then God's hand is on it, and everything is exactly as it's supposed to be.
"Those who hope (wait for) the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on eagles wings, they will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint. Is 40:31
I believe. We will run again mamma. I believe.