Grief's Ferocious Tentacles

There are so many tentacles of grief.   It feels like as I escape being ensnared by one of grief's giant arms threatening to choke the life from my body...there's always another one waiting just out of sight that I don't see coming.

I believe that a dominant theme in the grief from the loss of a child is the profound sense of loss for what could have been.

For me with Lynda, it is the strongest with what could have been had she not been abused at the child development center in Batesville, MS and if she had not gone to Millcreek Rehabilitation Center in Magee, MS.  If Lynda had been allowed to continue to learn and grow as the little girl we entrusted to Millcreek for respite care in September, 1981....how different her life might have been.

So we as parents have no choice but to fight through grief while protecting our vulnerable hearts and wrestle with a force most of us have never prepared to battle.  Some days we manage to keep the demons at bay and other times we just hide and hope they don't find us.

In our desperate attempt to survive we find ourselves looking over our shoulders....back in time at the exact time we are  also examining the future.  When we collide face first into the past with our child and the future without her....the grief monster tries to devour us with the profound sense of loss for what could have been.

So we unpack our memories of our child of the time we were given.  We do what parents do best and guard those memories with the sweet knowledge that God shared a miracle with us that was time sensitive.  Like a caterpillar that enters into a cocoon and later emerges as a spectacular butterfly our child burst into radiant perfection as she entered heaven.  As we wrestle grief's hold on our hearts,we are confident that the only arms that hold her are those of Jesus.  For my precious child there are no more battles.  The victory has been won by Jesus for her and He is right beside her mother as she banishes the profound sense of what could have been by keeping her eyes of what is yet to come.

Grief begins to shrink over time as God continues to show me all that my child has gained and the desire to finish this world's work and cross over to where she is waiting is intensified.  Purpose edges out grief but it doesn't destroy it.  Grief will never go away until I join Lynda again.  Hopefully we parents will learn to dodge the spears grief throws at our hearts when we are least expecting them. Memories are a powerful weapon to protect our hearts.  Memories of our child cover our heart in a protective self-sustaining armor.  The shield can never be taken away and it is the perfect antidote to grief's tendency to try to suck the life from our souls.

God gave us our child and left us with vivid and precious heart prints of the times we spent together.  Grief is no match for our God so we know that in time we will claim victory over our fears and the emptiness that once was filled by our child. But we will never forget.  We will never be the same.

Each mother's time table for grief is different.  Each dad deals with grief on his own terms.  Parenting is personal and grief is too.  One day at a time we chip away at grief with God's help.  One day.  One hour.  One minute.  That's just the way it is.  The sooner we accept that it isn't going to be okay overnight, the sooner we begin to heal.