Making Space

We went to our grief support group meeting last night. It was an interesting meeting, for the most part. Max and I had missed the last two meetings, in December and January. We traveled in early December, and in January went to my uncle’s funeral in Pittsburgh. It was a long time to go without our grief group.

The group discussion always starts off with a topic, but that topic evolves into whatever people end up talking about. Usually the “heavy hitters,” the people who talk at almost every meeting, start out. A lot of times we hear long stories from them that we’ve heard many times before, about how their children died and who their children were.Although it’s hard to listen to the same stories (for me at least), the group makes space.

Eventually we moved to a topic I thought was interesting. How can we continue to parent our children now that they are dead? How do we best challenge the people in our lives to make space for our ongoing parenting relationship with our children?

I’m not sure the people in my life recognize my ongoing parenting relationship with Sarah. They do say things like “You’ll always be Sarah’s mother” but they don’t know how uniquely difficult it is to parent a dead child. To make sure she is still happy and safe. To expect to hear from her, but give her distance at the same time to start her new life.