Grief

The Book- Living, Loving and Losing a Son

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Grief Recovery

The death of my child Robb was devastating, taking years for me and my other

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family members to get beyond the loss. In fact, I don’t think you ever “get over” the loss, but many people learn to accept it. This process can take years and is different for everyone. During my time of grief, when my son Robb died, I read somewhere that grief is the process of getting used to doing all the things you did with the person who’s gone, without that person, and I think that there’s some truth to that. Looking back now, twelve years later, that seems to be true for me.

Robb and I, our last picture
together

When you think you’ll never get over the pain and grief, when you think of nothing else, and then one day you realize that for ten minutes you did not think of the lost child, that is a clue that the recovery process is beginning. Soon those times will become a half hour, then an hour and eventually half of a day, you are on your way to recovery.

Tiny steps perhaps, but steps that bring hope that one day you will be in a better place. When all of that began happening for me, I knew that eventually I would be okay. Not great for a long time, but so much better.

There were many things I did during the years I was going through the pain and anguish over Robb’s death. First of all, because I had the time and I worked at home, I was able to fully experience the pain of his loss. I felt he deserved that. In Ann K. Finkbeiner’s book, After the Death of a Child: Living with Loss through the Years, she says: “It’s not that they [the parents] have gotten over their child’s death or that they are better and stronger people for it, but the amount of pain is a measure of the amount of their love, and that they hope they do so in a way that does honor to the lives their children should have lived.”

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Living Loving and Losing a Son

These words touched me. I felt strongly about this statement and agreed with it. I hadn’t wanted to rush through my grief either just trying to “get better,” to feel the pain less, nor did I feel that rushing through grief would actually work.

Surviving the loss, you can become a stronger, wiser, and more courageous person. I went from being a fun-loving, frantically busy person to a more mature, quieter, thinking person. I spent more time with my other children, getting to know them on a deeper level. Marriage counseling during that time was important for me and my husband. I also became active in a new church, eventually working on their Board of Worship, finding that passing out the Eucharist, the wine and bread on communion day filled me with a sense of closeness to God and with love for the congregation I was serving. Asked to be the one who arranged the flowers for the altar every Sunday, I learned to arrange flowers, eventually teaching others to do the same.

I became more aggressive in getting things done, such as arranging trips with my husband to far-flung places we’d never thought of visiting before. Photography, which had been mostly family picture taking became a new passion for me. Another new world opened up for me with the writing of a memoir about my son, his death and our family. Much of the book discusses how our family carried on after Robb died.

Living Loving and Losing a Son, is tribute to my son that died unexceptantly at 37. We were devastated when we found out. Perhaps it will help you make some sense of any grief you are currently going through.