Tag Archives: untimely death

COMPASSION FOR MY CHILDREN

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7. BE COMPASSIONATE WITH YOUR SURVIVING CHILDREN

  • Grieving siblings are often “forgotten mourners”. This means that their parents and family as well as friends and society tend to overlook their ongoing grief or attempt to soothe it away.

CARPE DIEM: 

Hold a family meeting and talk to your children about their feelings since the death. Even if the death wasn’t recent, you may uncover lingering resentments, fears and regrets. Expressing these feelings may help bring your family closer together. (Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD, HEALING A PARENTS’S GRIEVING HEART: 100 PRACTICAL IDEAS AFTER YOUR CHILD DIES, 2005)

Sadly, it was a long time before I could look around and see how Joseph’s death affected my children. My youngest daughter is actively involved with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (https://afsp.org/). She is on the Board in our state and is their Social Media Ambassador, with a team of volunteers. She is very open, publicly, about how her brother’s death affected her. On the anniversary of his death, for the past few years, she, her daughter, and I have been going to the beach to watch the sun rise. Afterward, we go to breakfast. One year we threw flowers into the ocean. Another, shells marked with the names of others’ lost loved ones, from an Out of the Darkness Walk (https://afspwalks.donordrive.com/OOTDWalks). We talk about Joseph a lot, but I can’t say that we talk about our feelings. Our relationship has had its ups and downs. She was able to share with me some of the resentments she had toward me that had nothing to do with Joseph. I was able to apologize. Our relationship has gotten better. There is still room for improvement.

My eldest daughter has her own mental health struggles and carries a lot of resentment toward me. We have not had a conversation about it. She has levelled some pretty nasty words toward me. In the hospital emergency room last year, she told me to leave the room when the screener asked her if she would be admitted voluntarily. She then asked her husband to have me come back in and said to me, “My mother is fucking up my life again.” When she came home and I tried to explain to her how, by having the hospital staff give her the contract I drew up for her return to my home, my intention was to tell them she was homeless if she would not agree. Before I could finish my explanation, which was that the hospital would then have to find her an appropriate supportive place to stay, she looked me dead in the eye and said, with venom, “The last time you told someone they were homeless, they killed themselves. Is that what you want?”

When I later recounted this experience to her sister, she looked at me, shrugged and nodded. I remember her saying, “Well, yeah”, but that may just have been my impression from the nod and the shrug.

My other son, well, he has not spoken to me in ten years. Our last conversation was on Mother’s Day 2015, the year after Joseph’s death. I was having a tough day. I had not heard from any of my children, so when he called, I was crying. Trying to hide that fact from him, when he said, “Happy Mother’s Day…ok, gotta go”…or something like that, I said, “Okay”. He sounded surprised; and, we did hang up. If I remember correctly, I then went to the cemetery, where I found my younger daughter and granddaughter. I walked to the grave, crying, and my daughter hugged me. (I could be confusing this day with another…) 

I saw my son sometime after that at my granddaughter’s First Holy Communion. I may have put my hand on his shoulder as I passed him in the pew on my way to receive communion myself. At the end of the Mass, he was gone. The family went out to eat, but I went home. It was just too difficult.

My mother passed away in January, and I saw him at the wake and funeral. I met his girlfriend for the first time and gave her a hug. I said, “Hello, Son” to him. He looked like a deer in the headlights, eyes shifting back and forth. I just walked away, giving him space. I saw him again the next day, at the funeral. I gave him an icon I bought for him in Fatima, Portugal, and had blessed by the Archbishop for the Military. Again, I walked away. We did not sit together at the repast, but he stood with my younger daughter, granddaughter and me for a photo his girlfriend took. She sent me a copy. I am grateful.

So…sitting down for a family meeting with my children for a discussion of our feelings about Joseph’s death, or about anything, is out of the question for now. Maybe someday.

SEVEN YEARS AGO

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Seven years ago today I buried my youngest child. He was 22 and would never live to see 23. At the cemetery, I stood at the foot of his casket while Deacon Steve performed the burial rite. I held the rose I would place on top of the casket when I said my final goodbye to his body. I think it unnerved the deacon, my standing there, not taking a seat under the tent meant for mourners. I don’t know that to be true. All I knew was that I had to stand with him, until the end.

It’s unnatural, burying one’s child. He’s frozen in time, forever 22. This year he would turn 30. What would he be doing now? Would he still be in his room, upstairs, creating computer programs/games? Apps? Beats? Those delightful cartoons? Would he be on his own? Perhaps with a family? Might I have more grandchildren to cherish? Would his jet-black hair be tinged with grey? Would he be clean-shaven or have a mustache and/or beard?

I sit in his room now, most nights, to watch TV. Last night, after watching a film on Netflix, I turned on my back and put my legs up the wall. I don’t remember now what triggered it, but I bawled my eyes out. It hits me like that now and again. Seven years ago yesterday, we held his wake. People poured through and I embraced each and cried in their arms, except for one. I still can’t believe she had the nerve to show up, but that’s a story for another time. It has nothing to do with Joseph. Maybe there were others I didn’t fall into, but she’s the one I remember most clearly. Anger replaced grief, momentarily. Even my therapist showed up and one of the members of my psychodrama group. Honestly, I have no idea who all came, or who didn’t. I have a copy of the sign-in book somewhere…but some of the pages are missing.

To all who showed, to all who sent flowers or food or cards, or thought of us at that time, great love and gratitude. If I didn’t send you a thank you, please forgive me. I tried, but I couldn’t get through them all.

Eulogy for My Son

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I awoke from a nap one day when I was pregnant with my fourth child, and said to his father, “How about ‘Joseph Francis’?” True story. That’s how he got his name. Joseph for the dreamer of the Old Testament and, of course, the foster father of Jesus, and Francis for the Knight of Assisi. He was baptized at Mass – on the very altar from which his Mass of Christian Burial was celebrated – on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, as a demonstration for his brother Eric’s 4th grade religious education class.

I used to say that Joseph wore his nerves on the outside of his body. As a young child, his feelings were often apparent and intense…when he was joyful, he would flap his arms and jump up and down. When he was upset, he fell to
pieces.

Even from a young age, logical explanations were comforting to him. In elementary school he was concerned that he might be kidnapped. While other children may have needed only to hear that it wouldn’t happen, Joseph needed a reason why. I told him the family wasn’t rich enough for anyone to bother. Oddly enough, this alleviated his fears.

Joseph was brilliant. When he was about 2 years old, maybe 3, he went for a walk with his Grandma Martha – my paternal grandmother – and, after a brief period, said to her, “Perhaps we should go home now.”

One day when I picked Joseph up from a summer computer camp, the instructor told me that he’d been teaching the kids how to program a musical scale when he heard “Ode to Joy” coming from one of the computers – guess whose.

Joseph was a thinker, an over-thinker, and a “make-you-think”-er. He had a way of asking questions that not only would make you curious as well, but would make you wonder why you never wondered why before. His sister, Jessica, said that while Joseph was living with her, she couldn’t help but turn to Google every five minutes to research things that came up in conversation.

He loved to draw. As a child, Joseph was inspired by the “Captain Underpants” illustrated series and began drawing his own comics. As he got older, his artwork gained influence from video games, graphic novels, and anime. The comics he
drew featured original – and usually fantastically absurd – characters and plot lines.

Family and friends could always count on him for silly, sweet, unique gifts for birthdays and holidays…and sometimes for no reason at all. Joseph was caring, sensitive, and kind. The time and thought he put into preparing those gifts were characteristic of Joseph’s love for his family and friends. He enjoyed creating presents, but not as much as he enjoyed seeing how happy they made everyone.

Joseph loved to experiment. Once he and his sister Christine stole Comet from above the kitchen sink and bleached the grass in the front yard. I was furious, but they thought it was hilarious. Suffice it to say that I found a safer hiding spot for the Comet after that.

He once kept a caterpillar in a bug box hoping to see it turn into a butterfly. It had made a cocoon, but the box was invaded by ants. They chewed a hole in the cocoon and ate the caterpillar. When Joseph went outside to find that his beloved test subject was gone, he swore vendetta against ants. He took his revenge by holding a magnifying glass over them in the sun with one fist raised high in the air.

Joseph believed that his father was the most successful person he knew. It amazed Joseph how much knowledge Frank has, particularly because Frank is self-taught. Joseph was impressed by his father’s business knowledge and admired Frank’s building and gardening skills. He respected his dad’s dedication to supporting his blended family of eight children and grew to love his second mother, Karen, who treated him as her own son.

George Carlin once said, “Here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: ‘We are the proud parents of a child who has resisted his teachers’ attempts to break his spirit and bend him to the will of his corporate masters.’” Joseph’s free spirit and strong will contributed to difficulties getting through school, but his parents – and even the teachers he frustrated – loved Joseph for his creativity and passion.

Anyone who ever met Joseph loved him from the get go. His gentle, loving spirit will live on in the hearts and minds of all who knew him.