Crying Places - It’s important to have some good crying places.

• Tracy gave me a key to her condo. Sometimes I go there to heat up a can of soup at lunchtime. But mostly I go there to cry. Sometimes I go to Falls Lake, park by the water and eat a piece of fruit. At home, I cry in the shower where my tears won’t fall on others.

• Sometimes I play a mind game – I take an hour away from my grief. I go somewhere close to nature, like the park or a friend’s back yard, and for one hour I pretend there was no yesterday and there will be no tomorrow. I sit for a while with no past and no future. I let my mind swim only in the present, in the breeze, in the sun or in the rain.

• Seek awareness of those things that trigger your tears. Try to control as many of those triggers as you can. (If it hurts too much to go to a place where you used to go with your child, don’t go.)

Uncomfortable Situations - You will face uncomfortable situations. In time, you will become more at ease with those things which, at first, jar your whole being. Some examples:

• Much of the time, others will be talking about their children’s activities – their baseball games, their school accomplishments, their jobs, their weddings. Try to share their happiness; sometimes life is as it should be. Acknowledge their good news and find your way to another conversation, another table or room.

• One of my co-workers in the newsroom hasn’t said anything but “hello” since the funeral. If I had a cast on my leg, he’d be saying plenty about my broken leg. But I’ve lost my son – my heart is in a cast – and he hasn’t even sent a note. I don’t understand how someone I’ve worked with for years can pass me in the hall as if nothing in the world has happened. He could say, “I don’t know what to say, but I’m thinking of you.” He could simply touch my arm or give me a hug the way so many others have. Charles says we have to understand that some people just don’t know what to say or do. He says they care, but they don’t know how to show they care. On the other hand, there are those who try to show they care but do so poorly. It’s excruciating the way clueless people try to find something positive to state about your tragedy: “He’s not suffering now” or “His work on earth was done” or “There’s a reason for it” or “At least you have another child.” Such statements can hurt tremendously, but try to remember the people who say these things are trying to help. Bless their hearts. Bless their little hearts.

• Jolts of pain will come in the strangest places, even in the mail – the college magazine with the mailing label addressed to your child who will never continue his education. Or the article in the newspaper announcing your child’s class reunion. But he’ll never attend another reunion.

• When your child dies before he can have his children, you lose your grandchildren, too. (Now I’m beginning to mourn my grandchildren, the children Jon would have fathered.)

• I’m not ready to do anything with Jon’s things in his bedroom – his trophies on the shelf, his collection of baseball cards, his yearbooks in the closet. Maybe Charles and I can box these things and put them in the attic for now. Different people handle things differently.

• I’ve been obsessed with reading the obits in the Raleigh News and Observer.  Every morning I feel compelled to scan them to see if any other young people have died. I have to see if the death of a child really does happen to other people, and if it does, how and why? Sometimes parents have memorial photos of their children on these pages. I know they’re trying to keep their children alive in the newspaper after five, ten, twenty or however many years it has been since their worlds came to a stop. I’ve been noticing how some parents place these memorials in the paper on the anniversaries of their children’s death dates. Others choose their children’s birth dates. I think the date they choose says a lot about how they have, or haven’t, moved forward in their grief. Maybe you get to the point where you can focus on how glad you are that your child was born. Maybe you get to the point where the positivity of the birth of your child is a more powerful force in your life than the negativity of his death. I’m going to try.

Life Goes On - it really does, and that’s what so hard. It’s like your world completely stops and everyone else keeps on living and going. That’s exactly what happens. Your world does stop, and sometimes it’s hard to be happy for the people who are riding on the merry-go-round – galloping about on their horses with their calliope music. But don’t begrudge another’s good fortune. Don’t begrudge another’s safe ride. Be happy for the children who do not die of leukemia and other diseases. Be happy for the parents of the children who don’t die. I don’t try anymore to make sense of any of the tragedies that happen. Instead, I’m trying to focus on what I am sure of – my love for Jon and all the meaningful things we shared.

Today, I’m just trying to put one foot in front of the other. I’m trying to breathe in, and I’m trying to breathe out.

You will run into people who have not heard your tragic news. I encountered Patsy, a former neighbor, in the pharmacy. “How are the boys?” she asked. I could only answer with tears. In my mind, I was saying, “Jason is fine. He’s at State. But Jon is dead. Jon is dead.” I will prepare myself to handle that question differently when it comes again. I’ll be ready. I’ll say, “Jason is fine. He’s at State. But our precious Jon died, and we’re really struggling right now.”

My friend Hazel also mothered a child who died of leukemia: “One day you will choose to be grateful,” she told me. “You’ll come to the point where you’ll have to choose either to dwell on the fact that something precious has been taken from you or to dwell on the fact that something very precious has been given to you. You can find comfort and healing in thinking of your child as the greatest gift you have ever been given. But it will take time to get to that point in your journey.” Hazel also said, “Your child’s death will be a major defining moment in your life, and you will use this tragedy to make yourself a better person.”