Originally posted by yo its me
My friend has been robbed of every little part of parenthood from a glow in pregnancy to breastfeeding and skin to skin hugging. No parent expects to have to out live their child. I can think of nothing worse. ... I've never felt pain like this before.
I have just come from unveiling the memorial plaque on my son's grave. He died a year ago today at age 25.
My wife, daughter and I know that of which you speak and we face it every day. I am sorry for your loss and the pain and grief that comes with it.
I can offer you no explanations. But from my experience and that of many others with and from whom I have sought comfort and counsel, let me advise you and your friend to find a support group right away. Find one composed of people who have had an experience like yours and hers.
I recommend that you read "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. It will not at first, of course, take any pain from you. Grief is a process and you need to work your way through it. Understanding it through the help one gets in a support group is one way to deal gently with the terrible darkness that looms before you and for which you seek an explanation.
Life can seem not only cruel, cold, indifferent, chaotic and malicious, but it can also seem absurd -- devoid of any meaning at all.
Be assured that neither I nor anyone outside of yourself can tell you or give you the meaning of life in the face of such terrible grief and suffering. No teaching, no words, no belief can do this for you.
Resist the temptation to yield to the natural anger at the unfairness, the cruelty, the seeming indifference of a chaotic, formless universe that could allow this child to die and for you and the baby's mother to suffer so. Resist the smug acceptance by others using cliches and their own beliefs, for they cannot know your heart unless they, too, have been in your place.
It is true that neither you, nor I, nor anyone control our lives or life itself. That is so very hard to accept that we tend to take refuge in belief systems -- and these systems always fail us, merely rationalizing things like this child's death that have no explanation, no purpose, no apparent meaning.
If you read Frankl, you will see that there is one and only one thing over which we do have control in life: our attitude towards it.
You ask for explanations. That is like expecting something from life -- and it isn't going to be granted you, my friend. Rather, turn this question around: ask yourself what does life expect of you?
Even in the face of the most severe suffering, and I would say the mother of this child now faces the worst pain she may ever face in her life, one still retains the choice to find a purpose and meaning for one's life.
Note that I said one has a choice. You can try to put the burden of this loss and this pain on someone else, but they will let you down.
You can try to fit the burden inside the words on a page and have some teacher or preacher tell you how faith in the words can make this burden easier to carry, and yet does the burden weigh any less upon you?
You can choose to look life and loss and its grief in the face, and leave the darkness behind, carrying only the light of your loved one with you. This only you can do. Would you choose not to have had this life exist at all? Or is it not better that at least for some days she was here and you remember her?
I am glad for the time I had with my son. I miss him terribly and I still grieve. But I take seriously my responsibility personally to find meaning and imbue my life with purpose, for I will not accept the idea that my life or that of my son is absurd. That is something entirely up to me.
It takes time and the comfort and friendship and love of many people to work through the process of grief and gain the strength needed to face the reality of life and loss and to give it meaning through your own choosing.
Give yourself that time. Seek out help and comfort from people who understand what you are feeling because they, too, have lost a child.
Do not listen to glib, easy, cliche filled nonsense by people who do not know your pain, do not understand how you feel, for their words are hollow and you gain nothing by them.
Read Frankl and learn how you may find your own way.
Frankl concludes that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living; life never ceases to have meaning, even in suffering and death.
Some quotes from the book:
* "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
* "Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.'"
* "When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves"
* "Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him - mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp."
* "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."
* "It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."
* "Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary."
* "Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death." (Cf. Song of Solomon 8:6)
* "We have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."
* "A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely."
* "Woe to him, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it to be so different from all that he had longed for!"
* "We were not hoping for happiness---And yet we were not prepared for unhappiness."
* "Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"
Babies born early.
11 Aug '08 16:151 edit
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