Home  Articles The Compassionate Friends Meetings WHY DO I COME TO BEREAVED PARENTS MEETINGS?
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WHY DO I COME TO BEREAVED PARENTS MEETINGS? |
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Written by Charlotte Miller
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Wednesday, 11 October 2006 |
WHY DO I COME TO BEREAVED PARENTS MEETINGS?
By Charlotte Miller
BP/USA Central Arkansas Chapter
A family member recently asked me why I continue to come to Bereaved Parents meetings? She said, “After all, it’s been
5 years since your son died. Don’t you find it depressing to go to those meetings?” I stopped and thought for just a minute...
it is incredibly sad to hear the stories of loss and pain, but it does not depress me. I ache for those families whose loss
is more recent, where the pain is a heart savagely torn into raw pieces and where the pain seems relentless and like it will
last forever. But had I not had the support of this group, I wonder if I would have made it, and kept my sanity, through
the past 5 years. I know for certain that my grief journey, as hard as it has been, was made easier, and my burden lighter,
because it was shared by those who truly understood my loss and who constantly reassured me that I was not losing my
mind...I was just grieving.
I have personally been blessed by a supportive family and by loyal friends at church and at work who, even after 5 years,
send me cards or flowers or call or e-mail to see how I am doing. And I am grateful for their support. But somehow there
is nothing quite like the hug of another bereaved parent and the tears that mingle with mine as we grieve together the
death of our own child and our friend’s child. I can’t explain it. I can only be grateful to have experienced this amazing
support that has made this unending grief journey bearable.
I can share laughter and tears at the same time with parents who understand the guilt that accompanies those first moments
of laughter It seems like a betrayal of our children...even though we know that they would want us to go on and
they would not want us to be miserable. A friend who was recently widowed told me just today that she was so sorry that
I had the grief experience to be able to comfort her and yet she was inexplicably comforted by the fact that she was not
alone in her grief...that there were others who understood even a portion of what she was feeling. I know what she means.
I felt that way the first time I came to a Bereaved Parents meeting and every time I have come since then. I would not
have chosen the pain of this loss and yet I would not want those whose children have recently died to not have the loving
support that others gave to me when I thought I could not stand another day, another minute of the pain of our loss.
And so we continue to come monthly...to meet, to hug, to cry, to laugh to listen and to try to understand another’s story.
And we come to love each other’s children that we never got to meet. Their faces become almost as familiar as our own
children’s countenance and so incredibly dear because they were so special to our friends. In sharing our children’s lives
and their deaths, they continue to live on through our stories and our pictures and we are comforted as we grieve together.
~reprinted from Bereaved Parents USA Fall 2006 Newsletter
http://www.bereavedparentsusa.org/BP_NatlNews.htm
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