Category Archives: Emotional Challenges

Death of a Child, Emotional Challenges, Grieving Children

I’m Still Here!

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“A number of years ago my sister was killed and I’m the only child left in the family. My parents are still grieving and I find myself screaming, ‘But I’m still here’. What’s wrong with this picture?” Tony in New York

Tony, the picture you describe in not only accurate, but common. And while it may be distressful to hear that, I would recommend you take comfort in this one fact – you are not alone.

Many young people, and even not so young people, who have experienced the death of a sibling, seem to feel invisible in their parents’ eyes even years later. It seems as if no one told them they still have a living, breathing, active, loving child or children.

One of the most, if not the most, devastating event that can occur for a parent, is the loss of a child. I can tell you from my experience with my former husband that it will change a person forever.

But it is important that you connect with your parents and let them know how being in their own little world is affecting you.

I know you’d probably want to scream out all the injustices you have felt since your sister was killed, but a better way is to simply send them a note. Don’t blame; chances are they have been oblivious to your needs. Instead, tell them how you feel. Let them know you love them and want to be closer to them. You’d like a way to start talking out loud again about your family situation.

Welcome them to start by writing back. Often times is you write or email, it is less confrontational and, obviously, can’t escalate to blame, name calling, or hurt feelings.

Once you’ve both written out how you feel and how her death has affected you, you can move toward asking for what it is that would correct your feelings of isolation within the family unit.

Emotional Challenges

Serving through the Pain

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“Yesterday at church our minister talked about serving the community, but I barely have enough energy for myself at this point in my grieving process. Am I being selfish?” Molly, New York

Hi Molly,

No, not really. When we grieve, it takes a lot of mental and physical energy. We often feel that our energy has been zapped from us. We need to take time for ourselves to rest and reflect as we walk through the grieving process.

But “serving” can be accomplished in a number of ways. You might not be able to help build a home, or fill a local food pantry, but you can give a few dollars to help out the cause. You can give a hug to someone when you see them in distress. You can listen when someone is hurting. You can send a card with comforting words.

What might surprise you is that magic happens when you help someone else even when you are dealing with your own pain. For just a little while you forget about your problems and you focus on someone else. That is the gift to you of giving of yourself.

And as you heal more, you’ll be able to contribute more. And eventually, someone will cross your path who might have the exact same type of grief that you’ve walked through and you will be able to comfort them.

Emotional Challenges

In The Blink of an Eye

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Well it’s been an interesting few months for me personally. On Monday evening August 31st Frank and I were driving home when an “alleged” drunk driver plowed into us head on, leaving us both unconscious in a near fatal crash.

Fortunately we were taken to the number one Trauma Center in the area, Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey, and spent seven weeks there being treated by a phenomenal Trauma Team, Orthopaedic Surgeons, Nurses and Aides.

This one irresponsible act has caused a great deal of trauma, pain, countless broken bones and realigned life plans for both us and family members who have graciously risen to become caregivers to us. Frank remains in critical care at the hospital and I’ve recently moved to a rehabilitation facility to work toward my recovery.

But as I’ve laid staring up at ceiling panels (do you have any idea how many tiny holes they have in them?) in between three surgeries, blood tests, IV changes, XRays, CT Scans, several pints of blood, Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, mountains of paperwork, police visits, and the constant consultations with nurses, trauma doctors and surgeons, you have no choice but to reassess how to move forward. And after the morphine fog slowly dissipates, and through a lot of trial and error you figure out a new pain management system, you begin to make plans again.

My beloved Foundation for Grieving Children, aka as the F4GC, continues to receive just as many grant requests while I’ve been hospitalized. We’d like to fill as many as possible and to do this I need your help.

During the month of November, we are asking our valuable donors and brand new friends who are sympathetic to our cause, to make their best donation at this season and also to extend an invitation and encourage all their friends in their email address books, as well as their Facebook, MySpace, Linked In and other social networking site accounts to give at least $10.00 sometime before November 30th. That’s only two coffees or a lunch!

To make it more fun, for each $10.00 donation you will receive 2 chances to win a 32” Insignia TV donated by Best Buy, 529 Fifth Avenue at 44th Street in Manhattan. If you donate $50.00, you’ll receive 10 chances; every $5.00 gives you another chance for the prize.

There are two easy ways to give:

1. By credit or debit card at Foundation for Grieving Children website.

2. Mailing a check to Foundation for Grieving Children, Inc., P.O. Box 3057, New York, NY 10163.

The winner’s name will be posted on our website (hopefully with their smiling face!). Funds raised in November will be sent out as grants in late December to non-profit organizations which assist, educate, counsel and comfort little ones who have experienced their parent, brother or sister, or grandparent’s death.

So please take some time this month as we move into the gift giving season to strongly encourage all your friends on Facebook, MySpace, Linked In, etc. and in your address book to make a donation before November 30th. Many thanks for spreading the word to everyone you know.

And a very special thank you in advance for your personal donation!

Blessings to you and your family,

Mary Mac
www.facebook.com/askmarymac
www.marymac.info

P.S. If you haven’t yet signed up to receive our F4GC newsletter into your inbox, please do so by simply sending an email to [email protected] and we’ll send you updates on what’s going on at the Foundation for Grieving Children. We promise not to flood you with emails because I can’t stand that either!! Just the facts madam, just the facts…

P.S.S. If you’d like to do even more, please put our cause on your personal Facebook page.

Emotional Challenges

Loving So Deeply…It Hurts

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I am reminded today of how deeply we grieve and why that really is the case. I believe we grieve so deeply because we loved so deeply. And when someone has loved so deeply they expose themselves to the vulnerability of feeling incredible pain when that loved one has died.

When we are falling in love with someone, there is little thought of all the pain they would eventually feel should their sweetheart leave them through death before they left the other person. We don’t give it much thought.

And as years go by and relationships are built and good times are shared and intimacy is developed together, we rarely think of what might happen if that person was no longer with us. If we might lose them to death regardless of when that might be in our lives.

We rarely think it might be sooner than later. We go into relationships thinking we will be with that person until we are old and gray and don’t give it much thought that there could ever be a chance they will die prematurely.

But sometimes this happens. We take years to find the love of our lives and never think anything would stop our living the dream together until our 70’s, 80’s or beyond. We look for the long haul. We look toward the ultimate…being happily together forever.

Yet what happens if forever is a few months, like when a fiancee is lost, or five years like when a new husband is killed, or like 10 years when the children are little and we need to raise them now alone, or 20 years like when the kids are grown and you thought you’d have the rest of your lives together with your sweetheart alone now.

And you find yourself in a situation where you never thought you’d be. You didn’t anticipate being alone at this point in your life. You are in love. You still have the fire you had when you began and it was snatched out from you at absolutely the wrong time in your life. There was so much life to still live.

I guess the greatest gift we can give those whom we love desperately is to always honor them, be kind to them and act as though they may not be here tomorrow. If we are kind and loving each and every day and let the nonsense slip away, we will never regret a thing of how we loved them. How we made them the center of our world. How we took the chance to completely and enthusiastically take them into our lives and love them without reservation.

Scary…oh yes. To open yourself up to that level of vulnerability seems crazy in the moment. But there needs always to be a time when we know deep down in our core that this person is my honey…my soulmate. He/she is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with and I am willing to take the chance to love them unconditionally knowing full well that we could lose them at any time.

But not having loved them would be so much more painful than taking the chance of loving them regardless of our past pains and losses. It takes courage to love again. It takes courage to live again.

And it is possible…

Death of a Child, Death of a Friend, Emotional Challenges, Vehicular Homicide/Drunk Driving

How It All Began

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About a half hour ago my printer spontaneously circled as if to print a document, but none had been requested. Whenever something like this occurs, being so in tune to spiritual happenings, I sat back to wonder what this was about.

After asking out loud for clarity, it occurred to me that on this day thirty-six years ago I lost the first person who ever meant anything to me. The first person who had made such an impact on my life and who, unknowingly, would usher me into this field of study and my profession.

At the tender age of 12, while he was 15, the nephew of my neighbor and I became close friends and he ultimately became the first ‘crush’ I experienced. And while Paul and I were looked upon as ‘forbidden’ because of the differences of our age, he was such a wonderful guy and friend who I cared for deeply.

We’d play Iron Butterfly’s songs and scream the lyrics across the room, help me babysit little ones, watch him study the guitar and try to master difficult songs, taught me wonderful dance steps and just had lots of fun laughing at his funny jokes. And like teenagers do, we stayed on the phone much too long and wrote silly letters to each other.

As fate would have it, he and his family moved away and we became penpals back then. Both he and I went on to meet other wonderful people, but his life would forever impact mine a few years later.

On this day, April 14, 1974 Paul was hit broadside and killed by a drunk driver at the tender age of 19 while pulling out of his driveway. I knew he died in the late afternoon, but when the printer circled at 4:35pm something made me believe it could have been just then.

So I sat back in my chair and just had this simple conversation with him as if his spirit was surrounding me at this very moment. And even all these years later, I filled up with tears because I can still see him in the coffin and how paralyzed I was sitting on the sofa in the funeral home looking at a person who had meant so much to me and it was not registering as to how he could possibly be dead at 19.

Over the years I have wondered how his family had been and what all became of them. I can only imagine how it affected his parents whom I didn’t get to see again.

But this little sign I believe he sent to me today had in its own way comforted me and reminded me that not only has he not forgotten me, but that no matter where we go in life, the people we love and have lost will always shown themselves to us. Their spirits live on.

This lovely, simple confirmation and remembrance today, for me, though bittersweet, reassures me that there is something after this life which we will all reach. And one day we will be greeted by all those who went on before us and when that happens what a heavenly party we’ll have!