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Too much loss in too short a period...
Hi all. My name is Mike and my family and I have suffered so much loss over the last eleven months that I just don't know if I will ever be able to get past it all. On Thanksgiving Day of last year, I lost my oldest sister Nancy from a viral infection in her lungs. She had lived most of my life 1000 miles from me but we all got together whenever we could. She moved back home when she retired three years ago and we were finaly getting to know each other as adults.Two and a half months later I lost my mother. She was 79 and lived with my wife and I for the four years we have been married and with me and my kids for 3 years before that. She was not in good health to begin with and when we lost my sister it was just too much for her. On the day I buried my mother, 2/14/04, I got back home and my wife and I were getting ready to go to bed when the phone rang. My 21 year old son had made some mistakes in his young life and was doing time for them. It was the prison calling to tell me that he had hung himself in his cell. I rushed to the hospital a couple hours away and spent all night at his side. He was in a deep coma and we lost him three days later. Needless to say I was a walking zombie for awhile. I was just really starting to come back a little bit and move on when last Monday another late night phone call. We are living with my sister now and she recieved a call at around midnight Monday night informing her that her son's ex wife,(who was still very much a part of our family), was in an auto accident and she was in a coma and their 8 year old daughter, who was an absolute angel, had been killed. We then lost her mother on Wed. We laid them both to rest, side by side just yesterday. The whole family is just numb and I just miss them all so badly. I just don't know that I can pick myself up again this time.Five people over 11 months,spanning four generations.I feel as though God has a personal grudge against me and my family. I could really use some shoulders right now and I am hoping this is the right place for that.
Response
I sit here reading and re-reading your message willing words to come, words to comfort and to connect with you. As you already know, those words are hard to come by. I remember a teacher of mine once saying to a family dealing with catastrophic loss: "I cannot take away your pain and I don't know if I would..." Your pain, your grief, your suffering is yours to bear. It belongs to each of those relationships. It shatters any sense we have that there is order or balance in our world when you, Mike, share the losses you and your family are being asked to carry in such a brief period of time. Would it be "easier" if you had time between each? You aren't being given the opportunity to answer that question. Is it possible you are being punished - as you suggest? Not in my worldview. You wonder how to get past this much loss - you don't get past it. You go through it. You use everything you've got - breath, tears, music, friends, prayer, G-d, nature, screaming, questioning, writing, helping each other, trusting, not trusting, remembering, laughing - everything you've got just to keep going. And you do. Life is different. You are different. And then life begins to unfold once again. We don't know when. We don't know how. But it does. That much I do know. I have often sensed that it is easier to ask for help from those we don't know; people outside our usual circle; someone we won't see again. I would like to imagine that I might be able to be that person for you right now. It's why I'm here.