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Writing: The Gap

6/14/2011

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The Gap
Category: Writing and Poetry
 
The Gap

The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one, whose  children are well and intact can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children have absorbed and what they bear. Our children come to us through every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal. We seek contact with their atoms, their hairbrush, their toothbrush,  their clothing. We reach for what was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded.

A black hole has been blown through our  souls and, indeed, it often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter there is to be cut deeply, and torn anew, each time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where our children now reside. This will be so for years to come and it will change us profoundly. At some point in the distant future,
the edges of that hole will have tempered and softened but the empty space will 
remain - a life sentence.

Our friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve for our children, in part, through talking about them  and our feelings for having lost them. Some go there with us, others cannot and  through their denial and a further measure, however unwittingly, to an already  heavy burden. Assuming that we may be feeling "better" six months later is  simply "to not get it." The excruciating and isolating reality that bereaved  parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it is a trap - those whose compassion and insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And yet, somehow there are those, each in their own 
fashion, who have found a way to reach us and stay, to our comfort. They have 
understood, again each in their own way, that our children remain our children 
through our memory of them. Their memory is sustained through speaking about 
them and our feelings about their death. Deny this and you deny their life.
Deny  their life and you no longer have a place in ours.

We recognize that we have moved to an emotional place where it is often very difficult to reach us.  Our attempts to be normal are painful and the day to day carries a silent,  screaming anguish that companies us, sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it its own voice we fear we would become truly unreachable, and so we remain "strong" for a host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and  drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings we would be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do
otherwise. People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard.

Working our way  through this over the years will change us as
does every experience - and  extreme experience changes one extremely. We know
we will have recovered when,  as we have read, it is no longer so painful to be
normal. We do not know who we  will be at that point or who will still be with
us.

We have read that  the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved
parents must attempt to reach out  to friends and relatives or risk losing them.
This is our attempt. For those  untarnished by such events, who wish to know in
some way what they, thankfully,  do not know, read this. It may provide a window
that is helpful for both sides  of the gap.

By Michael Crenlinsten

(Orignially Posted Nov 23/07)
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    The majority of all these entries were written by Darrel's father, Stephen.  For those that are not, efforts have been made to give proper credit where it is due.

    The bulk of the posts are in the June 2011 Archives Section, as that is when I transferred them over to this site.  Category Tags should allow you to find entries easier.

    I've tried to correct spacing issues on many of the entries, as most of the older ones have been copied from different sites I've used in the past. I apologize if some have been overlooked.

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