Steps to losing a child

Step One: Lose a child. Not what anyone wants to happen and nothing you can do to change it, but you can go through steps to becoming happy again. You can go through steps to loving again. You can go through steps to become a new you because after losing a child you will never be the same person you once were.

Step Two: Initial shock. Screaming as loud as you can to reach death. For me it was also telling everyone I met that my child had passed. Your brain goes blank and does not understand what is happening. Now a reminder, everyone who goes through grief of death can do all these steps in a different order, but shock is always the first step for everyone. When in shock I wanted to tell the entire world, my son had died. I was at Target buying clothes for my other children and myself because all of ours was gone from the car accident and as I am paying for the clothes I am crying and telling the clerk that my son had just died. I was telling everyone because I was trying to grasp my new reality. In this step the hole is created in your soul for what is missing and never to be anymore. In this first step you forget things all the time and forget details of the event. While other details are blown up wide where you try to forget them and cannot. For my son I could not remember most things, but one thing that stayed bright was the blood oozing out of his life. The exhaustion of the man who did CPR on my son. The tears streaming from everyone’s faces. The police officer asking me to take a drug test once I got to the hospital. The Champlain came in and I understood at that moment that my son was not going to make it. The scream erupted out of my mouth when I realized what was going on. Me and my children holding hands in an empty room next to my son praying to God to give us strength through the challenging times we were about to endure.

Step Three: Denial. Denial of a new reality and what is going on. Trying to tell myself repeatedly it was not happening. Grasping at straws that I knew were too short to be real. Feeling heartache but dreaming my child was still there to only wake up and realize that they were still gone. Never to really understand the loss in this stage.

Step Four: Anger and Depression always reaching to be center stage. The two at times going back and forth\, at other times combining into one making life even harder. Going through anger you will hate yourself and continually blame yourself; you will hate others and you will blame others. At the beginning I kept replaying the day repeatedly trying to see how I caused the event of the death of my child. If I had not turned my head for one second to yell at my boys for fighting, my child would be here. If I had stopped at the bridge my kids wanted to see and let them play my child would be here. If I had said yes to my daughter, she would not have been hit by the train. Blaming my ex for putting so much weight on top of the car and making the car tip. Even at the time being angry at my son for fighting with siblings, making my eyes leave the road. These are normal thoughts to have during grief because you are trying to understand. You are not as hateful as you seem to yourself.

In depression it is always as (at least for me it was and it can be for many others) the hardest to get past. You become only a small piece of yourself; you are a shell of the person you once had been. You start to stay home all the time and just cry, scream, and grow numb to the new world you are in. Never understand and not wanting to be happy. You feel like you should not be able to be happy because the grief is so large. My kid’s grandmother opened my heart when I needed it; she told me that it was ok to be happy even in sad times. She reminded me that my child would want me to have happy moments even in their passing. The stage of depression will also affect the other relationships in your life. For me I had five children and for a while I struggled to give the hugs that I used to and I would be not as comforting as I once was as a mother. For me, this also changed again in step five and six but during this stage it was hard for me. In the depression phase you are unable to see the happy moments that you and your child had; you can only see that death that took them.

Step Five: Testing or seeking solutions to find ways to cope with the death. I was smoking half a pack of cigarettes only outside before my son died. When my son died, I would lay in bed smoking up to two packs of cigarettes a day. Finally, I realized I had no control over my son’s death, but I did have control over my smoking habits, so I quit cold turkey with my husband. After my daughter died I had no control over my health, and I gained about eighty pounds. I was overeating everything and eating large portioning of food. After my grief I took control and lost weight, and I am still losing weight.

Step Six: Acceptance: Acceptance is my favorite step thus far, and mind you that not everyone is able to get to this step. You learn to understand the actuality of your life. A life that may not have your child in it, but one that can still have happiness and love. Acceptance is the stage where you say, “yes my child has died but now I need to live again.” This stage is where you take control over your life again and stop letting grief overtake you. Acceptance is also where you understand that you are now a different person because you went through grief, but that does not mean that you are still not a good and beautiful person inside. You learn that now you get to see the world in a unique way and that is a special gift from your child. I personally have more reasons now to smile when I think about my child than having sad moments that get me down. I smile and still tell everyone I know that I lost my son and daughter, but I also remind them when they say sorry, that my children watch me all the time and are always smiling at me. In the stage of acceptance, you find a way to bring your children that are gone into your life still and love them from afar. I will always love you, my babies!