Our son Isaac died at the age of 26 in 2005. We have not
been whole since. We carry
on
and even
have days of
happiness with our surviving daughter, her
husband,
grandchildren
and some friends but we live trying to precariously balance death in life.
When Isaac died it was as if a leg were cut off and we lost our balance for a very long time. It is simply not easy to balance on one foot. Just try it. You may have seconds of steadiness and control but then, imperceptibly something happens to disrupt your equilibrium. You begin to fall and
have to put the other foot down.
Try to imagine
what it is like to not have the other foot. Can’t put it down
and well, you fall.
That is what life is
like after one
loses
a
child.
It
is an eternity of trying to balance on one foot. Sometimes it can be
maintained for a while but inevitably balance is lost and
you fall down.
This is an account of losing a leg, falling
down, getting
up and the
long journey toward then learning how
to balance as best as is possible on
one foot. It is the story
and impressions of death, grief and
resolution to
live again without a significant part of our lives.
Just the other day after ten years since our son’s death, I was struck, blindsided by
a sudden realization that he was gone and would not be coming back. My life fell back into
depression. Grief had snuck up on me again. Grabbed me
as I sat there cross-legged in the calm belief that I was coping with it all well.
Yet I have to say that I am actually dealing with it better.
The grief, the pain, the loss all have generally become less
intense. Less immediate.
But the longing to be with, to see,
and to hold my son again has never gone away.
He
did
go away
and
left me with
a
phantom
pain that exists most every day. Yes,
I know that most books on grief and loss work their way to a point at which life goes on
and there is peace and calm. They
can’t help
it. They do not want to simply leave the reader with the hurt of the
possibility that the loss of a child
is an event that just does
not disappear fully. Unlike a bad day at work
or an intense sunburn that hurts like hell, burns like fire but
does fade
away and all is normal at some point. All is well
again and the skin heals over so things are like they were before
getting burnt. Not so for the death of a child.
The death of a child is such a traumatic experience that
there is no other event that is strong enough to make it
fade. The pain does diminish. The grief finds a place within
the
daily aspects of
life.
The excruciating agony of
loss weakens into an everyday longing that sits at the back
of
the day like an imp just waiting for a
chance
to invade your
psyche.
Demanding
an exorcism of and by
depression. Life becomes livable but maybe not fully
expandable.
Most books like to work to a climax at which life is again open and even
happy. They are after all written to try and
help people survive grief and loss. They
discuss coping skills. They tell of how we made progress on the passage from
utter
despair to learning to
live
with
the loss.
But along the way they leave
out
the pain and some of the raw reality of part of that journey.
This one
will not leave that out.
It
won’t because
too often
grieving parents have experiences that they believe are
aberrant or make them abnormal. From real physical pain and memories that don’t want to function properly, to soul dragging depression, to even thoughts of
suicide.
These
are
all
normal if anything is normal after the loss of a child.
This book shares
aspects
of loss
and
grief
that
are
too
often
left out of the journey
back
to stasis that
parents
must take to
survive and move on. It will try not to leave
anything out so you know others have gone through what
you have and
are going through on your journey to becoming more whole again and rebalance life with grief.
But it is after all my journey. I can only relate what I went
through from losing
balance in life, to guilt, depression, thoughts of suicide, even brief longings for death. It may well be different than that of others. There are similarities
in all bereavement it
seems though. And these will be discussed through my own journey and my learning to balance on one leg and hop through life.
Excerpted from Standing On One Foot: A Journey Through Death, Deep Grief and Finding a New Balance in Life by Neal Raisman
