Grieving while still trying to uphold our many roles is beyond challenging. Often, parents find it particularly hard to help their children grieve while also doing so, themselves. But grieving as a family can be a beautiful thing, as my friend, K.C. Freeman Ray shared recently on her FB page. I share this with her gracious permission:
Sometimes you win at parenting, sometimes you lose & sometimes you mess it all up 😢
Sometimes you win at parenting, sometimes you lose & sometimes you mess it all up 😢
And then sometimes, by the grace of God, your kids do what needs to be done to fix it. ❤
Long Backstory: on March 18, 2016, Tony and I had to say goodbye to our precious pup Abby. She was our first kid & the first really great decision we made as a couple. They had found cancer in October of 2015 & it was killing her, slowly.
Long Backstory: on March 18, 2016, Tony and I had to say goodbye to our precious pup Abby. She was our first kid & the first really great decision we made as a couple. They had found cancer in October of 2015 & it was killing her, slowly.
She was holding on for us, for Max [their soon-to-be-born son], really but she was in so much pain, we could see it in her eyes. We did not take the kids with us to the vet but we did bring her home and laid her to rest here.
But when all was said and done I was hurting so much that I simply shut all that emotion up & closed the door. I missed her so much & the guilt for ending her life and the pain I caused my kids & Tony was crushing.
I couldn’t deal so I packed it up in a box & shelved it for another day. I never told anyone, didn’t post about it, couldn’t look at her pictures or make the memory box with her stuff.
Two days ago, Bailey [their daughter] mentioned that she really missed Abby… I told her I did to, concealed my tears behind my sunglasses & steered the conversation somewhere safer.
The thought had never crossed my mind that my shelving my pain, I had required my kids to silence theirs.
Tonight, Bailey had to talk & cry and get it out. We are 14 months past Abby’s death and we are just starting to grieve. Because Bailey allowed herself a moment of vulnerability, Tony & I finally gave ourselves permission to grieve for her too. I thought she was fine, we thought she was fine.
In our grief we missed the fact that we were going through this together and it was our job to walk them through understanding their pain but also to be honest with them about our own.
What a huge lesson.
Hopefully this will bring a season of healing & growth.
RIP my precious Abby, we love you & miss you more than words can express. You would have loved Max!
For more information about grief and resources on grieving, go to hospicewhispers.com
Rev. Dr. Carla Cheatham spent years working in hospice and palliative care and is now a trainer, author, and consultant for professional caregivers around issues of presence, boundaries, self-care, compassion fatigue and resilience, healthy teams, ethics, and more. Learn more about her trainings at carlacheatham.com
