What is Normal Now?
Normal for me is trying to decide what to take to the
cemetery for Christmas, birthday, Valentine's day, and
Easter.
Normal is discussing with a friend in the Netherlands
how different funeral customs are there than here.
Discussing how much both our children loved the
things they loved and how those things are now
sitting lonely collecting dust.
Normal is talking to a co-worker and the conversation
going toward how you felt after your child died.
Normal is sitting at the computer crying, sharing how
you feel with
chat buddies who have also lost a child.
Normal is feeling like you know how to act and are
more comfortable with a funeral than a wedding or a
birthday party. Yet, feeling a stab of pain in your heart
when you smell the flowers, see that casket, and all
the crying people.
Normal is feeling like you can't sit another minute
without getting up and screaming cause you just
don't like to sit through church anymore.
And yet feeling like you have more faith and belief in
God than you ever have had before.
Normal is going to bed feeling like your kids who are
alive got cheated out of happy cheerful parents and
instead they are stuck with sober, cautious people.
Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile
when you realize someone important is missing from
all the important events in your families' life.
Normal is not sleeping very well because a thousand
what if's and why didn't I's go through your head
constantly.
Normal is having the TV on the minute I walk into the
house to have noise because the silence is deafening.
Normal is staring at every little girl or boy who looks
about my childs age. And then thinking of the age my
child would be now and not being able to imagine it.
Then wondering why it is even important to imagine it
because it will never happen.
Normal is every happy event in my life always being
backed up with sadness lurking close behind
because of the hole in my heart.
Normal is seeing my son/daughter at the cemetery
visiting his brother's/sister's grave and thinking, how
could this be normal? He/she shouldn't have to be
going through this.
Normal is seeing other kids that are the age our
angels would be teasing and playing with their
brothers and sisters and feeling so envious of
them.
Normal is seeing our childrens friends and wondering
why they can't be with them. Why her, why him?
Normal is singing a song and feeling really great
about doing well, followed by an immediate down after
thinking how my child would have said, "That
was beautiful Momma (whether it really was or not).
Normal is telling the story of my childs death as if it
were an everyday common place activity and then
gasping in horror at how awful it sounds. And yet
realizing it has become part of our normal.
Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task
of how to honor your child's memory and their
birthday and survive those days. And trying
to find the balloon or flag that fits the occasion.
Happy Birthday? Not really.
Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the
sight of a penguin/bird/dog/cat. Thinking how they
would love it, but how they're not here to enjoy it.
Normal is getting up early to exercise (when I really
hate exercise) because I know my mental health
depends on it.
Normal is disliking jokes about death, funerals.
Bodies being referred to as cadavers when you know
they were once someone's loved one.
Normal is being impatient with everything but
someone stricken with grief over the loss of their child.
Normal is feeling a common bond with friends in
England, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, and all over
the USA, but yet never having met any of them face to
face.
Normal is a new friendship with another grieving
mother and meeting for coffee and talking and crying
together over our children and our new lives. And
worrying together over our living children.
Normal is not being able to rest until you get the
phone call that your 15 year old with a school permit
has arrived at school just fine. And having the
courage to let your 17 year old not call after driving to
school because he/she is insulted that you need to
check on him/her.
Normal is being too tired to care if you paid the bills,
cleaned house or did laundry or if there is any food in
the house.
Normal is wondering this time whether you are going
to say you have 2 or 3 children because you will never
see this person again and it is not worth explaining
that one of them is in heaven. And yet when you say
only 2 to avoid that problem you feel horrible as if you
have betrayed that child.
Normal is feeling terribly hurt when you see your
child's power point presentation at parent/teacher's
conference and that child has listed no brother. Then
you realize the way the information is set up there
really is no logical place to list the brother who has
died and went to heaven.
And how awkward that must of been for him to think
about the problem.
Normal is avoiding McDonald's and Burger King
playgrounds because of small happy children that
break your heart when you see them.
And last of all normal is hiding all the things that have
become normal for you to feel, so that everyone
around you will think that you are
"normal".
Bill speaks at the dedication, Alec's 1 year angel day, April 24, 2005. |
Services
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