Acceptance
This is a funny one. How does one accept something so utterly awful. So devastating.
Oddly, I found it quite easy to accept Lizee's death on one level. But that's the thing: there are many different levels of acceptance, and perhaps we will be on this journey for the rest of our lives.
When Lizee first died, you accept it: our daughter's dead. Part of you is coldly able to understand this, another part of you is desperately desperately sad, shocked, traumatised. The cold part gets on with organising the funeral and thinking about other people. The other part bubbles on alone.
We realised early on that the only path available to us was acceptance. All other options: anger, denial, bargaining just weren't going to help us be the people we wanted to be, or give us the life we wanted to live. So acceptance it was. But how to get there?
No easy solution, and boy I tried. Amazing how you can fall into trying to bargain yourself out of it - surely if we do this, or do that, or go on a nice holiday, we'll feel better. Or the reasoning-yourself-out-of-the-grief trap (my specialty) - if I can only understand this grief thing, I'll be able to crack it/ get a handle on it/ beat it.
The thing is, no end of theorising or reasoning, or questioning or routing around in your brain for a solution is going to work. You can't project manage this thing called grief.
Really? You can't work through some easy steps and get to the end of it?
Right.
Right.
I remember going to my first SANDS meeting and someone (who had another child after losing their first) telling me that having another child doesn't miraculously make losing your first child better. I was really shaken by this. This was the first time I realised, fully, that there really were no easy answers, that I was in this for the long haul, that I was in this, FOR LIFE. That the reality of Eliza's death would NEVER change. It would never go away, and I would have to live with this FOREVER.
I found it seriously frightening, that there was no escape, that this was for real and forever. I was overwhelmed. How does one accept such imperfection in life? (perfection always having been a favourite of mine...).
This was big. The biggest thing I'd had to deal with.*
I'm not quite sure what happened after that realisation. I had, from the start tried to let the grieving take it's own course (despite my desire to manage it!) - instinctively, I knew this was the right thing to do, and I was interested by how well I took to this idea. I guess it's all you can do. We also met a couple at SANDS who I remained in touch with, and talking and emailing with them really helped.
The true acceptance began when I hit rock bottom in December and January 2011, 9 months after Eliza had died. It was at this point when I had no fight left. My brain was all reasoned out. There was nothing left to 'do' with the grief but to live it. To make it truly a part of me.
It was at this time that I felt like there was nothing ahead. It was like I'd lived my life, like I was old, and there was nothing left to do but wait for it to finish. I wasn't suicidal, at all. Nothing like that. It was more a sense that I'd lived a whole life and that there wasn't anything more.
When I told Nick, our psychotherapist this he made reference to the idea that in some philosophies human beings need to 'die' in some way in order to be reborn. I took comfort in this. That this darkness that I was experiencing, was my rock bottom, my crisis, my 'moment of death' and that from that point, there could spring new life. It made sense to me: that I had lived a whole life, and that I was now on the cusp of a new one, one into which the reality of Eliza's coming and going was fully integrated.
Acceptance is a strange thing, it is surrender and it is strength. Buddhists believe that life is 'suffering' and our quest as humans is to learn to live with that suffering with grace. I'm not a Buddhist and this theory would take some teasing out, but certainly, the part of life I hadn't experienced up to Eliza's death was suffering. I remember saying to Jane at Green Fuse (our amazing funeral directors) on our first meeting, that I feel more human now than I did before. I get 'it' more.
We require acceptance of so many things in life in order not to fight against what we cannot change or do not have control over - difficult family members, loss of a job we loved, a broken vase, a long illness. So what Eliza's death is teaching us is something applicable to a lot of the rest of our lives. Acceptance is not giving in; (that would be a show of weakness and the act of submitting takes something from us). Acceptance is surrendering, and that is a show of strength and free will, which conversely energises and renews us.
I had a big sense of this when I was back visiting Eliza's grave in May (2012). I had this sudden strong sense that I was 'home', that she will always bring me 'home' to the essense of what it is to be human, and what it is to be a part of this extraordinary universe.
Did I tell you, her grave is beautiful? It is one of my favourite places - under a cherry tree with a view overlooking fields, and facing the western light. We haven't yet put up her gravestone so it currently has stones in a rectangle with an E in the middle and a flower pot at the top, marking her spot.
So yes, Eliza's coming and going was the worst, but it was also the best and I am grateful everyday for the gifts she is giving us.
*Strangely, for about a year or so, I'd known something big was coming. I had always wanted to fully experience what it means to be human, and here it was. I didn't 'ask' for Eliza to die, but I do think that subconsiously, I was 'asking' for the next challenge.
Oddly, I found it quite easy to accept Lizee's death on one level. But that's the thing: there are many different levels of acceptance, and perhaps we will be on this journey for the rest of our lives.
When Lizee first died, you accept it: our daughter's dead. Part of you is coldly able to understand this, another part of you is desperately desperately sad, shocked, traumatised. The cold part gets on with organising the funeral and thinking about other people. The other part bubbles on alone.
We realised early on that the only path available to us was acceptance. All other options: anger, denial, bargaining just weren't going to help us be the people we wanted to be, or give us the life we wanted to live. So acceptance it was. But how to get there?
No easy solution, and boy I tried. Amazing how you can fall into trying to bargain yourself out of it - surely if we do this, or do that, or go on a nice holiday, we'll feel better. Or the reasoning-yourself-out-of-the-grief trap (my specialty) - if I can only understand this grief thing, I'll be able to crack it/ get a handle on it/ beat it.
The thing is, no end of theorising or reasoning, or questioning or routing around in your brain for a solution is going to work. You can't project manage this thing called grief.
Really? You can't work through some easy steps and get to the end of it?
Right.
Right.
I remember going to my first SANDS meeting and someone (who had another child after losing their first) telling me that having another child doesn't miraculously make losing your first child better. I was really shaken by this. This was the first time I realised, fully, that there really were no easy answers, that I was in this for the long haul, that I was in this, FOR LIFE. That the reality of Eliza's death would NEVER change. It would never go away, and I would have to live with this FOREVER.
I found it seriously frightening, that there was no escape, that this was for real and forever. I was overwhelmed. How does one accept such imperfection in life? (perfection always having been a favourite of mine...).
This was big. The biggest thing I'd had to deal with.*
I'm not quite sure what happened after that realisation. I had, from the start tried to let the grieving take it's own course (despite my desire to manage it!) - instinctively, I knew this was the right thing to do, and I was interested by how well I took to this idea. I guess it's all you can do. We also met a couple at SANDS who I remained in touch with, and talking and emailing with them really helped.
The true acceptance began when I hit rock bottom in December and January 2011, 9 months after Eliza had died. It was at this point when I had no fight left. My brain was all reasoned out. There was nothing left to 'do' with the grief but to live it. To make it truly a part of me.
It was at this time that I felt like there was nothing ahead. It was like I'd lived my life, like I was old, and there was nothing left to do but wait for it to finish. I wasn't suicidal, at all. Nothing like that. It was more a sense that I'd lived a whole life and that there wasn't anything more.
When I told Nick, our psychotherapist this he made reference to the idea that in some philosophies human beings need to 'die' in some way in order to be reborn. I took comfort in this. That this darkness that I was experiencing, was my rock bottom, my crisis, my 'moment of death' and that from that point, there could spring new life. It made sense to me: that I had lived a whole life, and that I was now on the cusp of a new one, one into which the reality of Eliza's coming and going was fully integrated.
Acceptance is a strange thing, it is surrender and it is strength. Buddhists believe that life is 'suffering' and our quest as humans is to learn to live with that suffering with grace. I'm not a Buddhist and this theory would take some teasing out, but certainly, the part of life I hadn't experienced up to Eliza's death was suffering. I remember saying to Jane at Green Fuse (our amazing funeral directors) on our first meeting, that I feel more human now than I did before. I get 'it' more.
We require acceptance of so many things in life in order not to fight against what we cannot change or do not have control over - difficult family members, loss of a job we loved, a broken vase, a long illness. So what Eliza's death is teaching us is something applicable to a lot of the rest of our lives. Acceptance is not giving in; (that would be a show of weakness and the act of submitting takes something from us). Acceptance is surrendering, and that is a show of strength and free will, which conversely energises and renews us.
I had a big sense of this when I was back visiting Eliza's grave in May (2012). I had this sudden strong sense that I was 'home', that she will always bring me 'home' to the essense of what it is to be human, and what it is to be a part of this extraordinary universe.
Did I tell you, her grave is beautiful? It is one of my favourite places - under a cherry tree with a view overlooking fields, and facing the western light. We haven't yet put up her gravestone so it currently has stones in a rectangle with an E in the middle and a flower pot at the top, marking her spot.
So yes, Eliza's coming and going was the worst, but it was also the best and I am grateful everyday for the gifts she is giving us.
*Strangely, for about a year or so, I'd known something big was coming. I had always wanted to fully experience what it means to be human, and here it was. I didn't 'ask' for Eliza to die, but I do think that subconsiously, I was 'asking' for the next challenge.