Most books on the subject of grief are quick to assure you that what you are feeling is “normal�?�?nothing to be embarrassed about, frightened of, or worried concerning. I disagree. I would qualify that MOST of what you are feeling is probably normal. I have come across, however, far too many people who wallow in their grief, enjoying the pity and attention they receive, to make a true effort to work through these feelings. Therefore I would say that in all likelihood, what you are feeling is normal but, if it is at the point where how you feel is affecting other family members in a negative manner, perhaps you need to reevaluate how you are coping with the death of your loved one and make some changes.

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One of the ways we can use to measure our progress in dealing with a death in our lives is to sit back and evaluate our feelings now and again. Our initial reaction to death will be emotional and extreme. We are quite adamant in expressing our feelings and how we handle situations at that time,  therefore it is a good idea NOT to do anything permanent that we may regret later when we have calmed down. It is also okay for us to look at ourselves again and possibly let ourselves “off the hook�?so to speak. This is particularly true in cases of suicide or accidents which happen at home. We tend to be harder on ourselves, and on God, than anyone else will be.

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I say this having had firsthand experience in this situation. My mind is so clear concerning those first days after our son, Shawn, died. Clear and very opinionated and this colored the way I handled my grief for quite some time afterwards. I found it difficult to find peace feeling the way I did and I definitely was not in a forgiving mood towards God at that point.

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You see, Shawn died at home on a bright sunny spring day. Geordin who had turned two just days earlier, and I were the only other family members present at the time. Bill had gone off to work hours earlier and the other boys had left for school. The details of that morning are etched into my mind but I speak of them only when I am trying to muddle through what I came away with on that awful day: the post traumatic stress syndrome that makes my heart race wildly, the tears that spring instantly to my eyes, and the sick feeling that invades my stomach whenever I think of that time or when I am confronted by emergency lights and sirens.

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What I am speaking of here is purely emotional, gut instinctual reactions. From the first, right after we were told that Shawn was gone, I felt anger and I felt I had been treated unfairly. My home is my workplace, my nest, my haven, my refuge. How dare God let  Shawn die here? Why was I alone left to deal with this? If he had to die, why couldn’t it have happened elsewhere? I thought of a dozen different scenarios outside our home which could have just as easily been the last place where Shawn was alive on this earth. What was wrong with them? Of all the places on earth, why was our home, our living room, our sofa, for Pete’s sake, where our son took his last breath? And why me? Why was I alone here? I had my hands full with an active two year old �?wasn’t that enough to ask of me? Maybe it was a selfish way to think, but I didn’t voice these thoughts to anyone.  They were between God and me. I figured He had some explaining to do here. I felt very abused and picked on. The entire rest of the family got off without having to handle these “extras�?so why me? What had I done that was so terrible that I warranted extra punishment in this manner? It just didn’t seem right to me and I was angry, damn angry.

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That anger carried me through a lot of tears and a lot of time. It helped get me going in the morning and it helped keep me doing what needed to be done to keep our family going. The everyday tasks of shopping, cooking, cleaning, laundry and helping with homework required energy �?that energy came from the anger I generated. That is why I say not all that we feel is normal or acceptable after we lose a loved family member. But sometimes it is what is needed to get us to a better place where we can begin to deal with the other emotions we set aside for a time. We can take our thoughts and feelings out a bit more leisurely and sort through them with more calm and peace than we would have had earlier in our grief.

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I felt such serenity come to me one day quite a long time after Shawn’s death. I was lying on the sofa and had begun to relax. As sometimes happens, my entire body relaxed while my mind was still clear. My eyes were shut tight to the light of the afternoon but I could hear the household noises continuing around me. The phone rang in another part of the house, one of the kids had a radio playing and, as usual in our house, two of the boys were bickering good-naturedly, Geordie was babbling in toddler-speak, and Bill was calling for one of our sons. These are the sounds of my family �?familiar, continuous, loud, and, oddly enough, I found them comforting. They meant everyone was home, everyone was well, and everyone was safe. The sounds wrapped themselves around me like a soft piece of flannel and I drifted off asleep feeling warm and good deep inside my heart.

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When I woke later I remembered how I had felt just before I fell asleep and I had a revelation at that moment for I realized right then that that was what Shawn had heard just before he took his last breath. No matter how sick he felt or if he was scared or despite any other bad emotions he may have been experiencing, if any, he still was surrounded by the sounds of our home which translate into nurturing love. I thought about what might have been going through his mind if he was in a hospital or a bus or at school or any one of the scenarios I had come up with where he could have spent his last minutes. And I realized that there was only one place where he could have felt the most security and love and safety and that was right here with me.

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For some reason, my boys have this way overblown idea of their mom as a sort of medical consultant. Mom, what do I do about this? Mom, how do I handle that? They think I know it all and, for the most part, I have had to deal with just about every ordinary ailment they have experienced. They aren’t familiar with the mom who was screaming inside that day when she found their brother not breathing. The mom who phoned 911 and started CPR was the one they know. The one who was calm and spoke clearly on the phone. The one who never thought she could remember the CPR but who did it just as it was taught in the refresher classes. Not the one who grabbed the phone and screamed where is that damned ambulance? The point of this is that they trust me to take care of them in every situation and this was no different than any other. I am sure Shawn drifted off thinking Mom was there doing everything she could to help him. I am sure he felt safe and cared for as he was lying there on the sofa. I had covered him up with a blanket, his baby brother was babbling to himself as he sat in the high chair eating his early lunch, I was talking on the phone on and off, the radio was playing in the background, and I believe Shawn just drifted off to heaven, as quietly and sweetly as he had lived his life.

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