After losing Zach, I haven't been riding a roller coaster of well established and easily defined stages. It has been a terrorist attack of emotions that come and go when they please, without consent from me. I don't think I've moved through any stages. I think it was more like they all hit at once and then just stuck around. While some emotions take an hour, or even a day or two off, they all come back eventually. And some of them bring new friends to the party.
I don't think losing a child is like any other loss. Period. You cannot compare it to that of a friend, a parent or grandparent, a sibling or a pet. So the same rules of Grief just don't apply. Some of the feelings may be similar, but they are on vastly different scales.
People often tell Dan & I that we are doing so well. That they are amazed at where we are in our Grief. I'm baffled by this. For starters, I don't feel like I am doing well. I feel downright crazy most days. And how does anyone know where we are in our Grief? I can't even answer that. I wouldn't know where to begin. So for those of you who are wondering how we are really doing, let me try and explain...
Dan & I are different than most people. We don't show the same types of emotions that most do. We have what I refer to as an emotional "lockdown mode" that we can control. Most people do not have this. They feel things, and it shows. In their faces and actions. We still feel things, we just do not share those feelings with many people. For the better part of my life, I have been called a bitch, heartless, cold, etc, by many people. And that's fine. I CAN be all of those things. But most people assume that because I am not SHOWING emotion, I must not be FEELING emotion. And that couldn't be further from the truth. Since losing Zach, Dan & I have felt and shown more emotions than either of us even knew we were capable of. But we've also locked down many, many feelings and kept them to ourselves, or select people. That is just who we are.
If we walked around showing all the things we were feeling since losing our son, the fallout would be catastrophic. Most people just cannot handle dealing with a Grieving parent. The truth of what we are thinking and feeling is too much for them. And that is fine. So we deal with it together. And with the help of a very small, but amazing support group of friends/family. Being the way we are, makes it hard for others to judge how we are doing. I understand that.
So, here is the best I can do. We are surviving. Some days are better than others. Distraction helps, but isn't a guaranteed fix. We think about Zachary constantly. Everything we see and do relates back to him. There is no escaping the reality that he is gone. We miss him with every fiber of our being and the pain is indescribable. That is our new normal. But we have also made the decision to use that pain as a reminder. A reminder to live, because Zach no longer has that option, and we do. So we've decided to live for him. To do all the things we know he would want us to do. To carry him with us in spirit constantly and use him as a catalyst to keep going, even when it gets difficult. We've adopted his attitude about life and let it inspire and motivate us. It doesn't always work, but it has made a HUGE difference in how we deal. We made our son a promise to get through this, and we refuse to break it. So we push on. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. It is all we can do. We are not the same people we were before, and we never will be.
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