STEVEN KALAS: When you lose a child, grieving is a lifelong experience
My address is titled "The Myth of Getting Over It." It's my attempt to answer the driving questions of grieving parents: When will I get over this? How do I get over this?
You don't get over it. Getting over it is an inappropriate goal. An unreasonable hope. The loss of a child changes you. It changes your marriage. It changes the way birds sing. It changes the way the sun rises and sets. You are forever different.
You don't want to get over it. Don't act surprised. As awful a burden as grief is, you know intuitively that it matters, that it is profoundly important to be grieving. Your grief plays a crucial part in staying connected to your child's life. To give up your grief would mean losing your child yet again. If I had the power to take your grief away, you'd fight me to keep it. Your grief is awful, but it is also holy. And somewhere inside you, you know that.
The goal is not to get over it. The goal is to get on with it.
Profound grief is like being in a stage play wherein suddenly the stagehands push a huge grand piano into the middle of the set. The piano paralyzes the play. It dominates the stage. No matter where you move, it impedes your sight lines, your blocking, your ability to interact with the other players. You keep banging into it, surprised each time that it's still there. It takes all your concentration to work around it, this at a time when you have little ability or desire to concentrate on anything.
The piano changes everything. The entire play must be rewritten around it.
But over time the piano is pushed to stage left. Then to upper stage left. You are the playwright, and slowly, surely, you begin to find the impetus and wherewithal to stop reacting to the intrusive piano. Instead, you engage it. Instead of writing every scene around the piano, you begin to write the piano into each scene, into the story of your life.
You learn to play that piano. You're surprised to find that you want to play, that it's meaningful, even peaceful to play it. At first your songs are filled with pain, bitterness, even despair. But later you find your songs contain beauty, peace, a greater capacity for love and compassion. You and grief -- together -- begin to compose hope. Who'da thought?
Your grief becomes an intimate treasure, though the spaces between the grief lengthen. You no longer need to play the piano every day, or even every month. But later, when you're 84, staring out your kitchen window on a random Tuesday morning, you welcome the sigh, the tears, the wistful pain that moves through your heart and reminds you that your child's life mattered.
You wipe the dust off the piano and sit down to play.
********
Feb. 26, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas
3 comments:
Wow, that is a great article. I can't imagine what your family has had and continue to have to go through. This article puts things into perspective. We love you guys and think and pray for you!
That is such a perfectly written, comforting, and true article. I am so incredibly proud of you that you are not just faking it and pretending to "get over it," Lloyds. I am impressed and in awe of how real you have been and how you are taking the time as a family to cherish Easton's memory and to let your grief do it's work. A dear friend of mine put her husband on a plane over 20 years ago and never saw him again. She still can't talk about the details, but she says that, over time, her motto became "Get on with it." This article made me think of her and for the first time I understood how profound and sweet her motto is. Thanks for sharing! Love you bunches. :)
Wow Jaim. This perfectly describes exactly how it is. It sounds strange to say you don't want to "get over it" but since this happened I have always thought that I don't want to "get over it" and have always thought that I never will. Really good analogy!
Post a Comment